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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 
EDITED BT JOHN MORLET 

EDWARD FITZGERALD 



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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 



BY 

A. C. BENSON 

FELLOW OF MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1905 

Ai/ rights reserved 



LIBRARY J? UONGHESS 
Iwu Copies rSscttvtiU 

JUN 12 iyU5 

(Ic^'yUl t X- 1 9 C <S 

COPT B. 



Copyright, 1905, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1905. 



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Norfaoolf 13«SS 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The principal books which I have consulted, and to 
which reference is made in the following pages, besides 
FitzGerald's own publications, are the following : — 

Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald, 
3 vols. (Maciuillan & Co.), 1889 ; Letters of Ediuard 
FitzGerald, 2 vols. (Macinillan & Co.), 1901; Letters 
of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883), 
(Richard Bentley & Son), 1895 ; More Letters of Ed- 
loard FitzGerald (Macmillan & Co.), 1901; Miscellanies, 
by Edward FitzGerald (Macmillan & Co.), 1900 — the 
above all edited by Mr. William Aldis Wright. 

Tlie Life of Edward FitzGerald, 2 vols., by Thomas 
Wright (Grant Richards), 1904 ; Hie Life of Edivard 
FitzGerald, by John Glyde (introduction by Edward 
Clodd) (C. Arthur Pearson), 1900; Tivo Suffolk Friends, 
by Francis Hindes Groome (Blackwood), 1895; Life 
and Letters of Edward Byles Cowell, by George Cowell 
(Macmillan), 1901. 

In studying the Omar Khayydm by FitzGerald, I 
have found specially useful the volume containing the 
four editions published in the poet's lifetime (Macmil- 
lan), 1902 ; the volume entitled Edward FitzGerald' s 
Rubd'iydt of Omar Khayydm, with their original Per- 
sian Sources collated from his oivn 3fSS., and literally 
translated, by Edward Heron-Allen (Bernard Quaritch), 

Y 



vi PKEFACE 

1899 ; a volume containing the Eubd''iydt, with a com- 
mentary by H. M. Batson, and an introduction by 
Principal E. D. Eoss (Methuen), 1900; and for general 
purposes, A Literary History of Persia, by Professor 
E. G. Browne (Fisher Unwin), 1902. 

For the Bibliography I have been enabled to consult 
the Chronological List of Edward FitzGerald's books, 
printed by the Caxton Club, Chicago, 1899, and the 
Notes for a Bibliography of Edtvard FitzGerald, re- 
printed from Notes and Queries, 1900. 

I have also consulted the Dictionary of National 
Biography, together with other critical and biographi- 
cal essays and articles. 

I take this opportunity of thanking the following 
for help, advice, and criticism : Mr. W. Aldis Wright, 
who has very kindly and readily answered my ques- 
tions, and lent me interesting unpublished documents ; 
Mr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, who has given me sim- 
ply invaluable assistance in the section dealing with 
FitzGerald's translations from Calderon ; Mr. Thomas 
Wright, for kind permission to make use of his Life 
of Edivard FitzGerald, which is a mine of detailed 
information about the poet's daily life and movements ; 
Mr. John Glyde, for a similar permission ; Mr. Edward 
Heron-Allen, for permission to quote from his transla- 
tion mentioned above ; Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr, Percy 
Lubbock, Mr. Howard 0. Sturgis, and other friends. 

A. C. B. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Early Years 1 

CHAPTER II 
Middle Life 24 

CHAPTER III 
Later Years 46 

CHAPTER IV 
Friends 67 

CHAPTER V 
Writings — "Omar Khayyam" ..... 84 

CHAPTER VI 
Plays — "Euphranor" — Letters .... 118 

CHAPTER VII 
Criticism 147 

CHAPTER VIII 
Habits — Character 167 

Index 202 

vii 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY YEARS 

The life that it is here proposed to depict was a life 
singularly devoid of incident. It was the career of a 
lonely, secluded, fastidious, and affectionate man; it 
was a life not rich in results, not fruitful in example. 
It is the history of a few great friendships, much 
quiet benevolence, tender loyalty, wistful enjoyment. 
The tangible results are a single small volume of 
imperishable quality, some accomplished translations 
of no great literary importance, a little piece of delicate 
prose-Avriting, and many beautiful letters. 

But over the whole is the indefinable charm of 
temperament and personality. The background is so 
minute, so uneventful, that it is only possible to draw 
a Dutch picture, so to speak, of the scene, not slurring 
over details, nor discarding homely touches, but 
depicting with careful fidelity the trivial round of 
little incidents and pleasures in which FitzGerald was 
more or less content to live. 

It may be thought that there is an excess of 
extracts from the letters ; but FitzGerald had a 
marvellous power of dipping and steeping the minute 
circumstances of his life in the subtle and evasive 
personality which is the essence of the man. He 

B 1 



2 EDWAKD FITZGERALD [chap. 

contrived to cast, by a style of wonderful purity and 
individuality, a delicate aroma of reflection, of pathos, 
of charm, over facts and thoughts that have but little 
distinct and actual significance. And therefore I have 
endeavoured to let FitzGerald speak much for himself, 
because I believe that it is the only true method of 
giving an impression of a character that, in spite of 
eccentricity, listlessness, and melancholy, possessed a 
rich and subtle attractiveness that is sometimes denied 
to figures of more vital force and more supreme 
achievement. 

Edward FitzGerald was born on the 31st of March 
1809. It is a fascinating but somewhat delusive task 
to try to trace the origins of genius. A great writer is 
often the outcome of a vigorous stock which has done 
nothing to exhaust its artistic vitality, but has slowly 
matured among simple pursuits; as for immediate 
precursors, a mother of strong feeling and a father of 
mild literary tastes would seem to afford the best 
possibilities ; but, as a matter of fact, it would be 
difficult to devise a milieu more incongruous with the 
temperament and preoccupations of Edward FitzGerald 
than that in which he was actually born. 

His father and mother were first cousins ; his father 
was John Purcell, son of a wealthy Irish doctor, a 
Dublin man, who traced his descent from Cromwell ; 
among the family relics were the Protector's sword 
and watch. FitzGerald's mother was Mary Frances 
FitzGerald, herself the child of first cousins, and 
descended from the Earls of Kildare. His maternal 
grandfather was a man of great wealth, with estates 
in Ireland, Northamptonshire, Suffolk, and elsewhere. 
Upon his death in 1818, John Purcell, FitzGerald's 
father, assumed his wife's surname, she being her 



1.] EARLY YEARS 3 

father's heiress. "I somehow detest my own scrol- 
loping surname," wrote our hero at the end of his life 
to Mr. Akiis Wright. 

Edward FitzGerald was the seventh of eight children. 
His father was a typical country squire, fond of hunting 
and shooting, and M.P. for Seaford ; but had an un- 
balanced vein in him, a tendency to nurse unpractical 
schemes, which eventually led to financial disaster; 
FitzGerald's mother was a vivid, gifted woman, of 
fashionable and social tastes, a good linguist, and fond 
of poetry. Her portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, to 
whom she more than once sat, shows a face of a 
haughty type, with bold dark eyes, an aquiline nose, 
black lustrous hair, and a small thin-lipped mouth, 
which gives an imperious and not wholly agreeable 
look to the face. Her children admired her intensely, 
but felt rather awe than love for the majestic and 
superb lady. The FitzGeralds lived in considerable 
splendour. The house in which Edward was born 
was the White House, Bredfield (now called Bredfield 
House), a stately, plastered, Jacobean mansion near 
Woodbridge. They had a town-house in Portland 
Place, as well as a Manor-house at Naseby, called 
Naseby Woolleys, where some of FitzGerald's early 
life Avas spent. There was another house on an 
estate at Seaford, and another at Castle Irwell, near 
Manchester. They owned pictures, old china, and 
gold plate ; they had a box at the Haymarket ; 
Mrs. FitzGerald drove about in a coach-and-four. 
Mr. FitzGerald spent money profusely on his stable, 
his electioneering expenses, his shooting. He seems 
to have had little head for business ; he was robbed 
by his bailiffs ; but his fortune could have stood 
considerable inroads had he not conceived a wild 
design of digging for coal under his Manchester pro- 



4 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

perty, a scheme which was eventually to engulph a 
great part of his fortune. 

When Edward was five years old, his father took 
a house in Paris ; and several months were spent there 
in each of the next few years. In 1821 the boy 
went to King Edward's School, Bury St. Edmunds, 
under Dr. Malkin. He retained a pleasant recollec- 
tion of this portly, genial, handsome, energetic man, 
whose lameness did not detract from his dignity ; 
and of the vivacity and kindness of Mrs. Malkin. 
The school had a great reputation, and Dr. Malkin 
paid special attention to the writing of English. From 
his school-days date several of EitzGerald's lifelong 
friendships. Among his boy-friends were William 
Bodham Donne (1807-1882), the well-known historical 
writer, and eventually Licenser of Plays ; J. M. Kemble 
(1807-1857), the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar ; and 
James Spedding (1808-1881), the editor of Bacon, a 
man of real though secluded genius. 

In 1825 the FitzGeralds left Bredfield and moved 
to a fine house near Ipswich, Wherstead Lodge, which 
had previously been let to Lord Granville, with the 
shooting, for £1000 a year; it was famous for its 
collection of pictures, and contained works by Hogarth, 
Cosway, Kneller, Lely, and Reynolds. 

Up to this time there is little in the records which 
would enable one to forecast the boy's future fame. He 
was fond of books, fond of the country and the sea ; 
and with a great devotion to the theatre. The home 
life had been happy and full of stir ; he had more 
experience of the world than most boys of his age ; 
there was a good deal of wilfulness in the family, and 
independence of temperament, which developed later 
into strong eccentricity in more than one member of 
the circle. Two traits of character, however, can be 



I.] EARLY YEARS 5 

traced from an early age ; one was FitzGerald's gift 
for idealising his friends, which led in after-life to 
some very true and sacred friendships, and also to 
some inconvenient sentimentality: the other was the 
boy's perception of and delight in individualities ai;id 
oddities of character. The neighbourhood of Wood- 
bridge seems to have been rich in singular specimens 
of humanity. Such was Squire Jenny, a near neigh- 
bour, a jovial, vigorous old sportsman, of short stature 
and with enormous ears, who lived with open windows, 
in carpetless rooms, into which the snow was allowed 
to drift ; his house presided over by a miserly sister, 
who hoarded money like a magpie, and practised a 
sordid frugality. Another such was a portly old 
Anglo-Indian, Major Moor, who wore a huge white 
hat, many sizes too big for him, and carried a stick 
made from the timbers of the Royal George. The 
Major collected images of Oriental gods, which he 
eventually immured in a pyramidal mausoleum near 
his front drive. He was always ready to walk with 
the boy, and would talk for the hour together about 
the racy provincialisms of the countryside, and about 
his Eastern experiences. To this influence we can con- 
fidently trace FitzGerald's early taste for expressive 
local words, and his interest in Oriental literature. 
Indeed Major Moor can, perhaps, be dignified with 
the title of the true begetter of the Omar Khayyam. 

The boy's delight in these singular persons, his 
appreciation of their personalities, their ways, their 
idiosyncrasies, show that his perception, his interest, 
and his observation were even at this early age both 
keen and humorous. 

Edward FitzGerald was one who lived all his life 
with a wistful and tender outlook upon the past. The 
old stories, the old days, had always a kind of gentle 



6 EDWARD FITZGERALD ' [chap. 

consecration for him ; one of the latest visits he ever 
paid was to see the old school at Bury ; and there is 
a little reminiscence of him, when quite an old man, 
in one of the half-whimsical, half-tender moods which 
characterised him, going through the grounds of Bred- 
field, and refusing to enter the house ; but gazing 
curiously in at the windows of the so-called " Magis- 
trate's Room," because it was there that he used to be 
whipped. 

In October 1826, at the age of seventeen, Fitz- 
Gerald went into residence at Cambridge, entering 
Trinity College ; he lodged with a Mrs. Perry, at 
No. 19, King's Parade, the house having been since 
rebuilt. The windows looked out on the fantastic 
screen of King's College, then just completed, the 
gate-house crowned with heavy pinnacles, and the 
austere and towering east front of the College Chapel. 
The Master of Trinity was Christopher Wordsworth, 
a younger brother of the poet, a man of majestic 
appearance and donnish manners. He was named by 
FitzGerald and his irreverent friends " the Meeserable 
Sinner," from his affected manner of responding in the 
College Chapel ; and the epithet was transferred to 
" Daddy" Wordsworth — as FitzGerald loved to call the 
bard — whom they named the "Meeserable Poet." Chief 
among FitzGerald's friends was W. M. Thackeray, 
then settled in rooms on the ground-floor of the great 
court of Trinity, near the chapel. The other members 
of the circle were John Allen, afterwards Archdeacon 
of Salop, a guileless, vigorous, and straightforward 
youth, of whom Bishop Lonsdale long afterwards wrote 
that he had never met a man who feared God more, 
or man less ; W. H. Thompson, afterwards the famous 
Master of Trinity; Frank Edgeworth, the brother of 
the authoress ; Robert Groome, afterwards Archdeacon 



I.] EARLY YEARS 7 

of Suffolk ; Charles Buller — then fresh from the tute- 
lage of Carlyle — who was to die prematurely before 
he attained the parliamentary fame which seemed 
surely awaiting him ; Frederick Maurice, the theological 
philosopher ; John M. Kemble ; Blakesley, afterwards 
Dean of Lincoln ; Merivale, the historian, afterwards 
Dean of Ely; James Spedding; and Richard Monckton- 
Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. Richard Trench, 
afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and the Tennysons, 
Frederic,^ Charles, and Alfred, were FitzGerald's con- 
temporaries at Cambridge, but he did not come to 
know them until a later date. 

It is a remarkable group of men ; and perhaps the 
most notable fact is that though many of them drifted 
apart from each other, yet FitzGerald, recluse as he 
was, continued to keep up affectionate relations with 
nearly all of them throughout life. " What passions 
our friendships were ! " wrote Thackeray of those 
undergraduate days. Friendships remained passions 
for FitzGerald. 

As might have been expected, FitzGerald was not 
an earnest student. He pottered about, read such 
classical authors as he liked in a desultory way ; 
occupied himself with water-colour drawing, music, 
and poetry. He cared nothing for the political and 

1 Frederic Tennyson, elder brother of Alfred, was born in 1807; 
he took his degree in 1832. He married in 1839 Maria Giuliotti, 
daughter of the chief magistrate of Siena, and took up his abode 
in Florence, where he lived for twenty years, afterwards moving 
to Jersey. He had a certain lyrical gift, but was overshadowed by 
his brother's fame, and his poems, Days and Hours, published 
in 1854, had little success. Between 1890 and 1893 he published 
three volumes of verse ; he was at one time much under the 
dominion of mystical and Swedenborgian ideas ; many of Fitz- 
Gerald's best letters were written to him, though after early life 
they never met. 



8 EDWAPtD FITZGERALD [chap. 

social aspirations wliich set his companions aglow; 
lie walked, talked, strolled into his friends' rooms ; 
he smoked, drank coffee, sang songs, and exchanged 
sketches with Thackeray. He had plenty of money, 
but no expensive tastes. His wardrobe was in a 
perpetual condition of dilapidation, insomuch that 
when his majestic mother rattled into Cambridge, 
with her yellow coach and four black horses, like 
a fairy queen, and sent a man-servant to acquaint 
FitzGerald with her arrival, he had no boots in 
which to attend her summons. 

There are two little pencil sketches of FitzGerald 
as an undergraduate, drawn possibly by Spedding, 
now in the possession of Mr. Aldis Wright, of great 
interest. In these he appears as a tall, loosely built 
youth, carelessly dressed, with rather full and promi- 
nent lips, of an ingenuous and pleasing aspect ; in one, a 
three-quarter face, he wears a smiling air. In the other, 
there is a pathetic droop of the brows which gives the 
face a sadder expression, more like his later look. 

In these days FitzGerald nursed far-reaching liter- 
ary projects, and was by no means devoid of ambitious 
dreams. He wrote long afterwards to Frederic Tenny- 
son: — 

" I have been ... to visit a j)arson in Dorsetshire. He 
wore cap and gown when I did at Cambridge — together did 
we roam the fields about Grantcliester, discuss all things, 
thought ourselves fine fellows, and that one day we should 
make a noise in the world. He is now a poor Rector in one 
of the most out-of-the-way villages in England — has five 
children — fats and kills his pig — smokes his pipe — loves 
his home and cares not ever to be seen or heard of out of it. 
I was amused with his company ; he much pleased to see 
me : we had not met face to face for fifteen years ; and now 
both of us such very sedate, unambitious people ! " 

The whole Cambridge life was a delightful one, and 



I.] EARLY YEARS 9 

exactly suited FitzGerald's temperament. He con- 
trived to take a degree in 1830; and then began a 
vague, drifting, leisurely existence which ended only 
with his death. He had money enough for his wants ; 
there was no need for him to adopt a profession, and 
it appears that no pressure was put upon him to induce 
him to do so. Probably a man with FitzGerald's dis- 
position both gained and lost by the absence of definite 
occupation. He often lamented it himself, but he was 
too irresolute to embrace a discipline which might have, 
so to speak, pulled him together. Perhaps if he had 
been forced to work for a livelihood, he would have 
been more careful of time ; perhaps steady work would 
have cleared off the vapours, and left him more desirous 
to use his hours of leisure. It is practically certain 
that one in whom the instinct for literary work was 
so definite as it was in FitzGerald, would somehow 
or other have contrived to write. But, on the other 
hand, definite occupation would have affected the 
quality of FitzGerald's writing. It is hardly conceiv- 
able that he could have been successful in the capacity 
of a professional man, though his patience and his love 
of finish might have made him a competent official ; 
if his life had been thus ordered, we might have 
had more translations of Greek and Spanish plays, 
and more literary essays ; but we should hardly have 
had Omar ; and certainly not the incomparable letters. 
So FitzGerald floated out upon the world ; he went 
for a long visit to a married sister, Mrs. Kerrich, who 
lived at a pleasant place, Geldestone Hall, near 
Beccles. After this he was to be found at Paris stay- 
ing with an aunt, and in the company of Thackeray, 
who professed to be studying art. But it seems 
that Thackeray's visit to Paris was a clandestine 
one, kept secret from his parents ; he had even told 



10 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

his college tutor that he was to spend his vacation 
in Huntingdonshire. Thackeray enjoyed himself at 
the time, but repented at leisure. He said after- 
wards that he never crossed the Channel without 
thinking regretfully of the episode : '' Guilt, sir, guilt 
remains stamped on the memory." From an endless 
round of gaieties, breakfasts, evening parties, theatres, 
FitzGerald escaped with a firm resolve to become "a 
great bear." He reached Southampton, where he fell 
in with Allen, who, in the course of a walk to Netley, 
" tried to make him steady in his views on religion." 

After this FitzGerald went off to the paternal estate 
of Naseby, where he lodged at a farmhouse ; and here 
he settled down to the kind of life that he thoroughly 
enjoyed: books, walks, and the company of simple 
village people, dining with the village carpenter, and 
going to church " quite the king " in a brave, blue 
frock-coat. 

Here it was that he wrote that beautiful lyric, 
" The Meadows in Spring," which has so sweet an 
intermingled flavour of old and new. 

" 'Tis a dull sight 

To see the year dying, 
When winter winds 

Set the yellow wood sighing : 
Sighing, oh ! sighing. 

When such a time cometh, 

I do retire 
Into an old room 

Beside a bright fire : 
Oh, pile a bright fire ! 

And there I sit 

Reading old things, 
Of knights and lorn damsels 

While the wind sings — 
Oh, drearily sings I 



I.] EARLY YEARS 11 

I never look out 

Nor attend to the blast ; 
Eor all to be seen 

Is the leaves falling fast : 
Falling, falling ! 

But close at the hearth, 

Like a cricket, sit I, 
Reading of summer 

And chivalry — 
Gallaut chivalry ! 

Then with an old friend 

I talk of our youth — 
How 'twas gladsome, but often 

Foolish, forsooth : 
But gladsome, gladsome ! 

Or to get merry 

We sing some old rhyme, 
That made the wood ring again 

In summer time — 
Sweet summer time ! 

Then go we to smoking. 

Silent and snug : 
Nought passes between us, 

Save a brown jug — 
Sometimes ! 

And sometimes a tear 

Will rise in each eye, 
Seeing the two old friends 

So merrily — 
So merrily I 

And ere to bed i 
Go we, go we, 

1 There is another version of the tenth stanza, in a probably 
earlier book : — 

"So winter passeth 
Like a long sleep 
From falling autumn 
To primrose-peep." 



12 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Down on the ashes 
We kneel on the knee, 
Praying together ! 

Thus, then, live I, 

Till, 'mid all the gloom, 
By Heaven ! the bold sun 

Is with me in the room 
Shining, shining ! 

Then the clouds part, 

Swallows soaring between ; 
The spring is alive, 

And the meadows are green ! 

I jump up, like mad, 

Break the old pipe in twain, 

And away to the meadows, 
The meadows again ! " 

It is difficult to praise tliis cliarming lyric too highly ; 
but two points are especially noteworthy in it : firstly, 
that a young man of twenty-two should have written 
a poem which is all touched with a sense of wistful 
retrospect, is very characteristic of the author ; and 
secondly, from the technical point of view, we may 
note the real literary skill shown in the construction 
of the stanzas ; the unrhymed fifth line, which ends 
all but the last two stanzas, acts as a delicate refrain 
or echo; and, in particular, the last line of the sixth 
stanza, " But gladsome, gladsome," follows with the 
subtlest charm the pause of reflective thought. 

The poem appeared in Hone's Year-Book in 1831, and 
again in the Athenceum, slightly altered, on July 9 of the 
same year. It was by some supposed to be the work of 
Charles Lamb ; and that Charles Lamb would willingly 
have been the author is proved by his writing of it: 
'' The Athenmum has been hoaxed with some exquisite 
poetry." . . . '"Tis a poem that I envy — that and 



I.] EARLY YEARS 13 

Montgomery's 'Last Man ' — I envy the writers because 
I feel I could have done something like them." 

To this period also belong the brisk lines "To Will 
Thackeray " : — 

" The chair that Will sat in I sit in the best, 

The tobacco is sweetest which Willy has blest" ; 

and the following year, 1832, the beautiful lines " To 
a Lady singing": — 

"Canst thou, my Clora, declare, 
After thy sweet song dieth 
Into the wild summer air. 
Whither it falleth or flieth ? 
Soon would my answer be noted 
Wert thou but sage as sweet-throated. 

Melody, dying away. 

Into the dark sky closes, 
Like the good soul from her clay 
Like the fair odour of roses ; 
Therefore thou now art behind it, 
But thou shalt follow, and find it. " 

Two stanzas were afterwards added, but without 
improving the song : — 

' ' Nothing can utterly die : 

Music aloft up-springing 
Turns to pure atoms of sky 

Each golden note of thy singing : 
And that to which morning did listen 
At eve in a rainbow may glisten. 

Beauty when laid in the grave 
Feedeth the lily beside her, 
Therefore her soul cannot have 
Station or honour denied her ; 
She will not better her essence, 
But wear a crown in God's presence." 

FitzGerald was reading at the time Hazlitt's Poets, 



14 EDWAED FITZGERALD [chap. 

and his letters are full of allusions to old English 
lyrists — such writers as Carew, Wotton, Donne, and 
Fletcher. But the wonder is that a man who at such 
an age could write such original, mature, and well- 
proportioned lyrics, should not have cared to pursue 
the quest. His other scattered lyrics, which it is as 
well to summarise here, are a little "Elegy to Anne 
Allen," sister of his friend, who died in 1830 ; " The 
Old Beau" and "The Merchant's Daughter" (1834), 
the former of which is a pretty poem of the school of 
Praed; "Bredfield Hall" (1839), which he himself 
rated highly, but which is nothing more than a lan- 
guid Tennysonian lyric, with several metrical lapses ; 
" Chronomoros " (probably about 1840), a somewhat 
jingling melody, with a philosophical motive ; a tiny 
idyll, "Virgil's Garden," a paraphrase of the passage 
from the Fourth Georgic about the Corycian old 
man, a sonnet translated from Petrarch, a verse 
"To a Violet," and some wretched memorial lines 
to Bernard Barton (1849). 

AVe get glimpses of FitzGerald in these early years 
wandering like the Scholar-Gipsy. Now he is in Lon- 
don buying books ; now he is staying at Tenby with 
the Aliens. From this last visit dates one of the most 
romantic friendships of FitzGerald's life. This new 
friend was a young fellow, William Kenworthy Browne 
by name, son of a Bedford alderman. He was fond of 
amusement, a keen rider, a good shot, a fisherman, a 
billiard player, but with an affectionate disposition, 
and a great fund of sterling common-sense ; moreover, 
not averse to books and literature, when pleasantly 
interpreted. FitzGerald, writing more than twenty- 
three years after to Mrs. Allen, said : — 

" I owe to Tenby the chance acquaintance of another Person 
who now from that hour remains one of my very best Friends. 



I.] EARLY YEARS 15 

A Lad — then just IG — whom I met on board the Packet 
from Bristol : and next morning at the Boarding House — apt 
then to appear with a little chalk on the edge of his Cheek 
from a touch of the Billiard Table Cue — and now a man of 40 

— Farmer, Magistrate, Militia Officer — Father of a Family 

— of more use in a week than I in my Life long. You too 
have six sons, your Letter tells me. They may do worse 
than do as well as he I have spoken of, though he too has sown 
some wild oats, and paid for doing so. 

He went in 1834 to stay with the Brownes at 
Cauldwell House in Cauldwell Street, Bedford, and 
hardly a year passed until Browne's marriage with- 
out one or more of these visits. It well illustrates 
FitzGerald's power of inspiring and maintaining a 
friendship, that so close a tie should have existed 
between two natures that would not have appeared at 
first sight congenial ; and it also illustrates FitzGerald's 
marvellous power of taking people as he found them, 
and loving them for what they were, with no desire to 
jnould them to his own will. 

Another of FitzGerald's chief friends and associates 
in early years was Bernard Barton, a Quaker, who had 
been for a short time in business in Woolbridge, but in 
1808 became a clerk in Messrs. Alexander's bank there. 
He was a most industrious composer of verse, only 
remarkable for its firm grasp of the obvious, which yet 
from its homely sentiment and domestic piety attained 
a certain vogue, and gave Barton a temporary position 
in the literary world. Barton was, moreover, a great 
letter-writer, and corresponded regularly with several 
eminent authors. Some of Charles Lamb's most 
delightful letters are written to him. Bernard Bar- 
ton's health was at one time considerably affected by 
his sedentary life ; after working in the bank all day, 
he would spend the evening writing verse, and sit up 



16 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

to a late hour finishing a poem. His letters to his 
friends are full of complaints of headache and low 
spirits. Southey gave him excellent advice in return, 
recommending him to go early to bed and avoid 
suppers. Charles Lamb, in his most characteristic 
vein, blended advice with fantastic rhetoric : — 

" You are much too apprehensive," he wrote, " about 
your complaint. I know many that are always ailing 
of it, and live on to a good old age. . . . Believe the 
general sense of the mercantile world, which holds 
that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good B. B., 
and not the limbs, that faints by long sitting. Think 
of the patience of tailors — think how long the Lord 
Chancellor sits — think of the brooding hen." 

At another time Bernard Barton announced his 
intention of giving up his post and earning a liveli- 
hood by writing. Charles Lamb replied in a charm- 
ing letter expressing the utmost horror at the idea : 
" Keep to your bank, and the bank will keep you. 
... the corroding, torturing, tormenting thoughts 
that disturb the brain of the unlucky wight, who 
must draw upon it for daily sustenance ! Henceforth I 
retract all my fond complaints of mercantile employ- 
ment ; look upon them as lovers' quarrels. I was but 
half in earnest. Welcome dead timber of a desk, that 
makes me live ! " 

Bernard Barton's position was, however, made easier 
by a gift of £1200 from some wealthy Quakers and 
relations of his own; and in 1845 Sir Robert Peel, 
after asking him to dinner in Whitehall, procured for 
him a Civil List pension of £100 a year. Barton 
wrote far too much and corrected far too little to attain 
to any permanent position in poetry. FitzG-erald, who 
wrote a brief memoir of Barton after his death, said 
that there was a kind of youthful impetuosity about 



I.] EAKLY YEAES 17 

him which could not be restrained. He was as eager 
for every one else to write verse as he was to write it 
himself ; he had no envy, and would scarcely admit a 
fault in the verses of others, whether private friends or 
public authors. Barton lived a simple life with his 
only daughter, devoted to literature of a higher kind •, 
FitzGerald was a constant visitor at the house ; and 
there must have been a great charm about the old 
Quaker, the charm of unembarrassed simplicity. His 
gentle egotism, his unaffected enthusiasm, made him a 
welcome visitor alike at Whitehall and in a country 
cottage. 

FitzGerald, who was alive to his weaknesses, describes 
him as " a very strange character ; a good-natured and 
benevolent person, with a good deal of pride and 
caution, with a pretence at humility ; perverse, formal, 
strict, plain, and unpresuming in his dress — a great 
many contradictions of character," and again he spoke 
of Barton as " looking very demurely to the necessary 
end of life." 

In 1835 FitzGerald paid a memorable visit to the 
home of his friend, James Spedding, at Mirehouse, 
near Bassenthwaite Lake, under Skiddaw, Tennyson 
being his fellow-guest. 

The friends rambled about, talked, smoked, and read. 
Late at night in the silent house Tennyson would 
declaim, in a voice like the murmur of a pinewood, 
out of a little red book, some of the poems afterwards 
to become immortal. Spedding was not allowed to 
read aloud, because Tennyson said that he read too 
much as if he had bees about his mouth. Old Mr. 
Spedding showed a courteous contempt, the contempt 
of a practical man, for the whole business. " Well, 
Mr. FitzGerald," he would say, " and what is it ? 
Mr, Tennyson reads and Jim criticises, is that it ? " 
c 



18 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Tennyson refused to visit Wordsworth, although he 
was constantly reading and quoting from his poems ; 
" I could not get Alfred to Rydal Mount," Spedding 
wrote. " He would and would not (sulky one), although 
Wordsworth was hospitably inclined towards him." 

Both Spedding and FitzGerald amused themselves 
by making sketches of Tennyson, and these highly 
interesting and obviously faithful delineations are 
reproduced in Lord Tennyson's Life of his father. 
After leaving Mirehouse, FitzGerald and Tennyson 
went on together to Ambleside, where they stayed a 
week. FitzGerald thus wrote of his companion to 
Allen : — 

" I will say no more of Tennyson than that the more I have 
seen of him, the more cause I have to think him great. His 
little humours and grumpinesses were so droll that I was 
always laughing : and was often put in mind (strange to 
say) of my little unknown friend, Undine — I must however 
say, further, that I felt what Charles Lamb describes, a sense 
of depression at times from the overshadowing of a so much 
more lofty intellect than my own : this (though it may seem 
vain to say so) I never experienced before, though I have 
often been with much greater intellects : but I could not be 
mistaken in the universality of his mind ; and perhaps I have 
received some benefit in the now more distinct consciousness 
of my dwarfishness." 

In July 1835, one Mrs. Short, of Boulge Hall, 
Woodbridge, died. Mr, John FitzGerald had purchased 
the property some time before, subject to Mrs. Short's 
life-interest. He now determined to move to Boulge, 
and Wherstead, which had been a happy home for ten 
years, was accordingly relinquished. Boulge Hall is a 
spacious Queen Anne house, with a fine garden, not 
far from the White House where FitzGerald was born. 
He describes it as standing in one of the ugliest 
and dullest stretches of country in England ; but it 



I.] EARLY YEARS 19 

has a compensation in the rich meadow-lands full of 
flowers, and the slow stream of the river Deben, 
widening to its estuary. Hard by is the flint church 
with its brick tower, under the shadow of which. 
FitzGerald was to be laid to his final rest. About the 
same time a friend of his was appointed to the living 
of Bredfield. This was George Crabbe the second, son 
of the poet, and father of George Crabbe the third, in 
whose rectory of Merton in Norfolk FitzGerald was 
eventually to die. 

Crabbe was a bluff, lovable, sensible man ; heroic, 
noble-minded, rash in judgment and act, liable to 
sudden and violent emotions, and morbidly self-dis- 
trustful, though over-confident in the success of causes 
near his heart, with simple habits and a Cervantic 
humour. 

FitzGerald thus describes him in one of the last 
letters he wrote : — 

," . . . If you can easily lay hand on my old Friend George 
Crabbe's Life of his Father the Poet, do read his account of a 
family Travel from Leicestershire to Suffolk, and the visit 
they paid there to your friend Mr. Tovell. You will find it 
some dozen pages on in Cliapter vi. — a real Dutch Interior, 
done with something of the Father's pencil — but quite unin- 
tentionally so; my old George rather hating Poetry — as he 
called Verse — except Shakespeare, Young's Night Thoiujhts, 
and Thomson's Seasons ; and never having read his Father's 
from the time of editing it in 1834 till drawn to them by me 
a dozen years after. Not but what he loved and admired his 
father in every shape but that." 

The old vicar was fond of flowers and trees, and 
pleased FitzGerald by crying out, when he heard of the 
felling of some oaks by a neighbouring landowner, 
" How scandalously they misuse the globe ! " He was 
just the sort of man, with his oddities and strongly 



20 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

marked characteristics, to attract FitzGerald. Crabbe 
used to pray aloud for his beloved flock, "including 
Mary Ann Cuthbert," a person of doubtful reputation. 
His daughters were obliged to empty his pockets of all 
spare cash for fear of his giving it away to beggars. 
He would sit smoking and meditating in a horrible 
little room smelling like an inn-parlour, and reeking 
with tobacco, which FitzGerald called " the Cobblery," 
from the fact that Mr. Crabbe there patched up his 
sermons. The FitzGeralds went in and out of the 
house unannounced, and always welcomed. " We 
children," wrote one of the younger Miss Crabbes, 
" were proud if he [Edward FitzGerald] let any of us 
do anything for him, or if we were allowed by our 
father or sisters to go and call him in to lunch, but he 
was sure not to come if called, though he would come 
if not called." 

In 1837 FitzGerald, feeling a desire to have a den 
of his own, took up his abode in a thatched lodge or 
cottage, containing two rooms, standing by the gate 
of Boulge Park. Here, with Shakespeare's bust in a 
recess, with a cat, a dog, and a parrot called "Beauty 
Bob," he began what he called a very pleasant 
Robinson Crusoe sort of life. He was waited upon 
by an old couple, John Faiers, a labourer on the 
estate, a Waterloo veteran, and Mrs. Faiers, a red- 
armed, vain, and snuff-taking lady, with a flower- 
trimmed bonnet. FitzGerald installed his books and 
pictures in the cottage. The place was a scene of 
desperate confusion. There were books everywhere ; 
pictures on easels ; music, pipes, sticks, lying on tables 
or on the piano. A barrel of beer provided the means 
of simple conviviality. Here FitzGerald would sit, 
unkempt and unshaven, in dressing-gown and slippers, 
or moon about in the garden. He strolled about the 



I.] EARLY YEARS 21 

neighbourhood, calling on his friends ; sometimes, but 
rarely, he Avent to church, noting the toadstools that 
grew in the chancel; and led a thoroughly indolent 
life, though with dreams of literary ambition. " He 
is in a state," wrote Spedding in 1838, " of disgraceful 
indifference to everything except grass and fresh air. 
What will become of him in this world ? " A picture 
which he draws of his life at this time to his friend 
Allen is very delicately touched : — 

" Here I live with tolerable content : perhaps with as much 
as most people arrive at, and what if one were properly grate- 
ful one would perhaps call perfect happiness. Here is a 
glorious sunshiny day : all the morning I read about Nero 
in Tacitus lying at full length on a bench in the garden : a 
nightingale singing, and some red anemones eyeing the sun 
manfully not far off. A funny mixture all this : Nero, and 
the delicacy of Spring : all very human, however. Then at 
half-past one lunch on Cambridge cream cheese : then a ride 
over hill and dale : then spudding up some weeds from the 
grass : and then coming in, I sit down to write to you, my 
sister winding red worsted from the back of a chair, and the 
most delightful little girl in the world chattering incessantly. 
So runs the world away. You think I live in Epicurean 
ease: but this happens to be a jolly day: one isn't always 
well, or tolerably good, the weather is not always clear, nor 
nightingales singing, nor Tacitus full of pleasant atrocity. 
But such as life is, 1 believe I have got hold of a good end 
of it. . . ." 

In the summer FitzGerald generally went off to visit 
Browne at Bedford, and there spent long days in the 
open air, rambling about and fishing. His moods were 
not always serene; with a kind of feminine jealousy 
which was mingled with his nature he would make 
snappish and acrimonious retorts to Browne's most 
innocent remarks, repenting of them moist-eyed, and 
saying "I hate myself for them." The thought of 



22 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

leaving Browne nsed to weigh on him for days. " All 
this must have an end," he wrote, " and, as is usual, 
my pleasure in Browne's stay is proportionately 
darkened by the anticipation of his going. . . , Well, 
Carlyle told us that we are not to expect to be happy." 
In this mood he would go to London for distraction, 
and find himself longing for the country ; he wrote to 
Bernard Barton : — 

" A cloud comes over Charlotte Street, and seems as if it 
were sailing softly on the April wind to fall in a blessed 
shower upon the lilac buds and thirsty anemones somewhere 
in Essex : or, who knows? perhaps at Boulge. Out will run 
Mrs. Faiers, and with red arras and face of woe haul in the 
struggling windows of the cottage, and make all tight. Beauty 
Bob will cast a bird's eye out at the shower, and bless the 
useful wet. Mr. Loder will observe to the farmer for whom 
he is doing up a dozen of Queen's Heads, that it will be of 
great use : and the farmer will agree that his young barleys 
wanted it much. The German Ocean will dimple with in- 
numerable pin points, and porpoises rolling near the surface 
sneeze with unusual pellets of fresh water — 

' Can such things be, 
And overcome us like a summer cloud, 
"Without our special wonder ? ' " 

And again to Frederic Tennyson, after escaping to 
Boulge : — 

" But one finds few in London serious men : I mean serious 
even in fun ; with a true purpose and character whatsoever it 
may be. London melts away all individuality into a common 
lump of cleverness. I am amazed at the humour and worth 
and noble feeling in the country, however much railroads have 
mixed us up with metropolitan civilisation. I can still find 
the heart of England beating healthily down here, though 
no one will believe it. 

"You know my way of life so well that I need not describe 
it to you, as it has undergone no change since I saw you. 



I.] EARLY YEARS 23 

I read of mornings ; tlie same old books over and over again, 
having no command of new ones : walk with my great black 
dog of an afternoon, and at evening sit with open windows, 
up to which China roses climb, with my pipe, while the black- 
birds and thrushes begin to rustle bedwards in the garden, 
and the nightingale to have the neighbom-hood to herself. 
We have had such a spring (bating the last ten days) as 
would have satisfied even you with warmth. And such 
verdure ! white clouds moving over the new-fledged tops of 
oak-trees, and acres of grass striving with buttercups. How 
old to tell of, how new to see ! " 

At this time lie made the acquaintance of Samuel 
Laurence, the portrait-painter, whom he afterwards 
employed to paint some of his friends' portraits for 
him ; " a dear little fellow," wrote FitzGerald, " a 
gentleman — made of nature's very finest clay — the 
most obstinate little man — incorrigible, who wearies 
out those who wish most to serve him, and so spoils 
his own fortune." 

FitzGerald also found time, if tradition is to be 
believed, to fall in love with Miss Caroline Crabbe, 
the daughter of his old friend the Vicar. It is to be 
wished that this romance had had a normal ending. 
But it seems that Miss Crabbe was alarmed at Fitz- 
Gerald's religious views, which were becoming more 
and more indefinite ; moreover, though FitzGerald was 
rich enough to dawdle, he was hardly rich enough to 
support a wife. The girl too was needed at home, 
being the eldest of a large family ; and she accordingly 
refused him ; but remained a dear and valued friend, 
and was one of the party assembled at Mertou when 
FitzGerald died. 



CHAPTER II 



MIDDLE LIFE 



The years passed slowly and easily, while PitzGerald 
flitted hither aud thither like a great shy moth. Now 
he is in Dublin with Browne, staying with some 
Purcell cousins ; now he is at Edgeworthstown, sitting 
in the library, while Miss Maria, neat, dapper, grey- 
haired, thin and pale, aged seventy-two, sits writing 
at the table or making a catalogue of her books, quite 
undisturbed by the general conversation. Now he is 
in London, getting on very well, as he writes, with his 
majestic mother, " by help of meeting very little." 
He goes out a drive with Dickens, Thackeray, and 
Tennyson, a precious carriage-full. Dickens he finds 
"unaffected and hospitable," but sees nothing in his 
face which would indicate genius, except "a certain 
acute cut of the upper eyelid." Or he would wander 
farther afield with an old friend. In the company of 
Tennyson he visited Stratford-on-Avon in 1840. Fitz- 
Gerald was more moved by the sight of the old foot- 
path to Shottery, so often trodden by Shakespeare, 
than by the sight of his house or his tomb. 

Erom the year 1842 dates EitzGerald's friendship 
with Carlyle, or " Gurlyle," as he appears in many of 
EitzGerald's letters, being so named by Thackeray, 
who was never content till he had transformed his 
friends' names into some more conversational form. 
It appears that Carlyle and Dr. Arnold had visited 

24 



CHAP. 11.] MIDDLE LIFE 25 

the field of Naseby a short time before, in order to 
provide accurate materials for Carlyle's Gromivell. 
Misled by an obelisk erected by FitzGerald's father to 
mark the highest ground, which they took to com- 
memorate the scene of the hottest engagement, they 
had surveyed with complete satisfaction, not the battle- 
field at all, but a tract of adjacent country, and had 
identified, erroneously but without misgiving, all the 
recorded topography. The incident casts a lurid light 
upon historical research conducted in situ. EitzGerald 
called upon Carlyle in 1842, under the wing of 
Thackeray, and, as the greater part of the battlefield 
belonged to his father, was able to enlighten the his- 
torian as to the blunder that had been made. Guided 
by local tradition, FitzGerald conducted some exca- 
vations at Naseby, and found the remains of many 
skeletons closely packed together. In the intervals of 
his task he read the Georgics, and watched the horses 
plodding and clanking out to the harvest-fields, up the 
lanes with their richly twined tapestries of briony and 
bind-weed. 

Carlyle was much excited by the discoveries ; '' the 
opening of the burial-heap," he wrote, " blazes strangely 
in my thoughts ; there are the very jaw-bones that 
were clenched together in deadly rage, on this very 
ground one hundred and ninety-seven years ago ! It 
brings the matter home to one, with a strange veracity 
— as if for the first time one saw it to be no fable, and 
theory, but a dire fact." " Why does the obelisk stand 
there ? It might as well stand at Charing Cross ; the 
blockhead that it is." 

But the task of excavation was not much to Fitz- 
Gerald's taste. " I don't care much for all this bone- 
rummaging myself," he wrote to Bernard Barton, and 
again in the same letter, of the uncovered dead : — 



26 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

" In the mean time let the full hai'vest moon wonder at 
them as they lie turned up after lying hid 2400 revolutions 
of hers. Think of that warm 14th of June when the Battle 
was fought, and they fell pell-mell ; and then the country 
people came and buried them so shallow that the stench was 
terrible, and the putrid matter oozed over the ground for 
several yards; so that the cattle were observed to eat those 
places very close for some years after." 

Carlyle desired that a block of stone should be 
erected over the grave, bearing the words, " Here, as 
proved by strict and not too impious examination, lie 
the slain of the Battle of Naseby," but the project was 
never carried out. 

At this time FitzGerald saw a good deal of a curious 
and interesting character, whose religious enthusiasm 
made a strong impression on him. John FitzGerald, 
Edward's eldest brother, an eccentric man of great 
earnestness, was mainly occupied in evangelistic 
work, and not only held services at Boulge, but 
made itinerant tours about the country, inspired by 
the most fantastic zeal for lecturing his fellow-men 
on their duty, and threatening the impenitent with 
all the terrors of hell. He thus became a close 
friend of the Rev. Timothy Richard Matthews, origin- 
ally a clergyman of the Church of England, but at 
this time residing at Bedford, and holding services 
in a proprietary Chapel. Matthews was a man of 
indomitable energy and primitive faith. " He believed 
in Jesus Christ," wrote EitzGerald, " and had no mis- 
givings whatever." He often preached in the open 
air, in black gown and bands, blowing a trumpet to 
attract a crowd. Sometimes he would hold baptismal 
services at a reservoir near Naseby, belonging to a 
Canal Company, and immerse converts, in company 
with John FitzGerald ; or he would anoint the sick 



n.] MIDDLE LIFE 27 

with oil, or pray ineffectually over a deaf person, 
putting down the failure to restore hearing to a 
deficiency of faith. He was a man of vivid and pithy 
talk. " John, be sure you are in the first resurrec- 
tion," he said to John Linnet, the vigorous gardener 
of the FitzGeralds at Naseby. FitzGerald often 
attended his services at Bedford, and hankered regret- 
fully after such unquestioning faith as animated 
Matthews. "His sermons," he writes, "shook my 
soul." Indeed, under the influence of this fervent 
Christian, FitzGerald came as near what is technically 
called experiencing religion as his nature admitted. 
He wrote : — 

" Oh this wonderful wonderful world, and we who stand in 
the middle of it are in a maze, except poor Matthews of Bed- 
ford, who fixes his eyes upon a wooden Cross and has no 
misgiving whatsoever. When I was at his chapel on Good 
Friday, he called at the end of his grand sermon on some of 
the people to say merely this, that they believed Christ had 
redeemed them ; and first one got up and in sobs declai-ed 
she believed it ; and then another, and then another — I was 
quite overset — all poor people : how much richer than all 
who fill the London Churches." 

The pleasant Bedford days were drawing to a 
close. Browne became engaged, and in 1844 was 
married; he took up his abode at Goldington Hall, two 
miles north of Bedford, a house filled with furniture 
that had belonged to Mrs. Piozzi. But Goldington, 
in spite of forebodings, became a second home to 
FitzGerald; and with his easy geniality he made 
friends with all the oddities in the neighbourhood, 
Mr. Monkhouse, an athletic antiquarian clergyman, 
and Captain Addington, who kept innumerable cats 
in his Turnpike Cottage. 

In 1845 Matthews died suddenly; FitzGerald, re- 



28 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

turning to Bedford, saw his coffin being carried along 
the street. John FitzGerald delivered the funeral 
sermon. He continued for some time to keep up 
Matthews's work at Bedford, but his sermons were of 
inordinate length, and he lacked the unction of the 
true evangelist. Edward was keenly alive to the gro- 
tesque side of his brother's character. " I wish my 
brother wouldn't always be talking about religion," he 
said; and on one occasion remarked that when his 
brother wrote D.V. in his letters, with reference to 
a proposed arrangement, as he habitually did, it only 
meant " if I happen to be in the humour." It seems 
indeed as if John FitzGerald's eccentricity verged on 
insanity ; when he preached or even when he listened 
to sermons, he was accustomed to remove certain 
articles of dress such as boots and stockings, and put 
the contents of his pockets on the seat of the pew, 
in order to make himself quite comfortable. At in- 
tervals during the discourse he would whistle shrilly, 
which was a sign of satisfaction. It would appear 
that he regarded his brother as a vessel of wrath, 
yet made no serious attempt to convert him; but 
in whatever form Edward FitzGerald was touched by 
religion — and there is no doubt that Matthews brought 
him as near to revivalism as he was likely to go — the 
perception of his brother's absurdities made the ac- 
ceptance of so violent and precise a creed a ludicrous 
impossibility. 

At this time the pivot on which FitzGerald's life 
turned was the Boulge Cottage. He was fond of 
inviting Barton and Crabbe there, calling them the 
wits of Woodbridge; or in his blue serge suit, cut 
very loose, he would stroll up to the Hall farm, where 
his friend Mr. Job Smith lived, and smoke a clay pipe 
in the big kitchen, reading the paper, or holding his 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 29 

protege, Alfred Smith, the farmer's son, between his 
knees. He wrote of himself in a strain of exaggerated 
pettishness to Frederic Tennyson, who had written 
complaining that FitzGerald's letters were dull : — 

" What is a poor devil to do ? You tell me quite truly that 
my letters have not two ideas in them, and yet you tell me to 
write my two ideas as soon as I can. So indeed it is so far 
easy to write down one's two ideas, if they are not very 
abstruse ones ; but then what the devil encouragement is it 
to a poor fellow to expose his nakedness so ? 

"... But you see the original fault in me is that I choose 
to be in such a place as this at all ; that argues certainly a 
talent for dullness which no situation nor intercourse of men 
could much improve. It is true ; I really do like to sit in 
this doleful place with a good fire, a cat and dog on the rug, 
and an old woman in the kitchen. This is all my live-stock. 
The house is yet damp as last year ; and the great event of 
this winter is my putting up a trough round the eaves to carry 
oif the wet. There was discussion whether the trough should 
be of iron or of zinc : iron dear and lasting ; zinc the reverse. 
It was decided for iron ; and accordingly iron is put up." 

But in 1846 he formed another of his great friend- 
ships. This was with E. B. Cowell, afterwards 
Professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge, then a young 
man of twenty, son of an Ipswich corn-merchant. 
Though brought up to business, Cowell had developed 
an assiduous taste for reading, had learned Latin, 
Sanskrit, and Persian ; he had finally become engaged 
to a lady several years older than himself, a Miss 
Charlesworth, with some small means at her disposal, 
and married her. Cowell was a shy, modest, humorous 
man, simple-minded and deeply religious, with an im- 
mense and catholic enthusiasm for literature, but with 
no great gifts of expression. It was he that introduced 
PitzGerald to Omar Khayyam. 

Cowell said humorously of himself that his chief 



30 EDWAED FITZGERALD [chap. 

function was to encourage other people to work. His 
great power as a teacher lay in his own enthusiasm, 
and also in the fact that his marvellous memory gave 
him an extraordinary facility in suggesting parallel 
passages and illustrations from a large variety of 
authors. ''What have you been reading," wrote 
ritzG-erald to him in 1846, " and what taste of rare 
authors have you to send me ? " 

Cowell's devotion to Sanskrit was such that he 
utilised the frequent letters imposed upon him by the 
exigencies of courtship as a vehicle for teaching his 
fiancee the language, as Avell as an opportunity of 
becoming better acquainted with it himself. He 
was now living at a cottage at Bramford, near 
Ipswich; and the time that FitzGerald spent there 
was probably the happiest of his life. He was as 
deeply devoted to Mrs. Cowell as to her husband; 
and the three spent many pleasant hours in the cottage 
covered with Pyrus japonica, with a garden of old- 
fashioned flowers, a big monkey-puzzle tree, and a 
little footpath leading to the mill. Here they read 
Greek, Persian, and Spanish. Mrs. Cowell, with a 
green ribbon in her hair, read her poems aloud and 
FitzGerald criticised. His memory long after dwelt 
upon the smallest details of the scene, though as usual 
his pleasure at the time was often over-clouded by the 
thought that the sweet days must have an end. The 
end came in 1851, when Mrs. Cowell, who had great 
ambitions for her husband, decided that he must go 
up to Oxford. FitzGerald strongly disapproved of 
this; as he wrote to Frederic Tennyson: — 

" Xot that I think Oxford will be so helpful to his studies 
as his counting-house at Ipswich was. However, being 
married, he cannot at all events become Fellow, and, as many 
do, dissolve all the promise of Scholarship in Sloth, Gluttony, 
and sham Dignity." 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 31 

Mrs. Cowell found it very difficult, in the face of the 
opposition of FitzGerald and Donne, to carry out her 
plan ; her great ally was a young Mr. George Kitchin, 
a friend of her husband's, now Dean of Durham. 
Mrs. Cowell's letters dealing with the matter are 
full of vigorous humour; her husband showed signs 
of vacillation. 

Mrs. Cowell began by asking FitzGerald to tell 
Donne that Cowell was going to Oxford, thinking that 
he would sympathise. Instead of complying, he tried 
to dissuade Cowell from the intention, saying that 
all was done and given at Oxford by favour. 

" And that he had far better," writes Mrs. Cowell, " try for 
something (of all nonsense to talk) in the wretched Scotch or 
London Universities. This is never to be thought of. . . . 
But the mischief of it is that to prove their point they so 
distort College life, in the dreadfully long letters E. F. G. is 
rousing up his languid energies to send to us, that Edward, 
who was just beginning, to my heartfelt thankfulness, to 
rise to the occasion, ... is now almost wliolly turned back 
again. ... E. F. G. may write again, or very probably 
return here in a day or two. I wrote to try and stop his 
writing, or using such influence, but quite in vain ; it only 
brought on fresh arguments." 

She continues, three days afterwards, to Mr. 
Kitchin : — 

" It was beyond measure important that your letter should 
arrive before another from E. F. G. came, or, what would be 
worse, himself. . . . 

" Edward [Cowell] asks if I have fairly represented E. F. G. 
and JNIr. Donne to you, — perhaps not, but you would see that 
they only meant kindly, and were acting according to their 
own view like true friends, and are both really men of the 
highest principle, as far as a man can be, who doubts if Scrip- 
ture be altogether the highest guide — and also men of fine 
taste and real scholarship ; but they are men totally incapable 
of appreciating Edward's higher qualities. . . ." 



32 EDWARD FITZGERALD [ch.vp. 

Still, Mrs. Cowell carried her point, and FitzGerald 
was overwhelmed with unhappiness ; he wrote to the 
Vicar of Bredfield : — 

"... My heart saddens to think of Bramford all desolate ; 
and I shall now almost turn my head away as any road or 
railroad brings me within sight of the little spire 1 I write 
once a week to abuse both of them for going. But they are 
quite happy at Oxford. . . ." 

FitzGerald was at this time trying in a quiet way 
to make himself useful, not so much on principle, but 
because it amused him ; he used to teach the children 
in the village school near Boulge ; and it was thus that 
he saw a good deal of Lucy Barton, the daughter of 
Bernard Barton, who used to teach in the Sunday- 
schools, and drifted into what seems to have become 
an indefinite engagement of marriage. In 1849 
Bernard Barton died, leaving Miss Barton very ill- 
provided for. FitzGerald at once took upon himself 
to edit, with an introduction, a selection from her 
father's letters and poems, which appeared in the same 
year. He took great pains to collect subscribers' 
names, and induced his friends and relations to order 
, a great number of copies. Carlyle, Thackeray, and 
Trench were on the list, while Spedding took ten 
copies, and George Crabbe no fewer than twelve. 
FitzGerald appears to have promised Bernard Barton 
that his daughter should be provided for after his 
death ; and it seems that both Barton and his daughter 
regarded this as tantamount to an offer of marriage, 
but that FitzGerald did not so regard it ; indeed the 
affair is involved in a good deal of mystery. 

Up to this time life had gone prosperously with 
FitzGerald, but in the year 1851 he felt the sharp 
touch of adversity. He had been using his eyes in- 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 33 

judiciously, reading till late at night by a dim paraffin 
lamp, and they began to trouble him. But he employed 
his disability like the ancient blind philosopher, pwero 
%it uno esset comitatior. His protege, Alfred Smith, 
the son of the farmer at the Hall farm, was now a 
big boy, and FitzGerald engaged him to come up in 
the evenings and read to him. Alfred was the first 
of a series of readers ; FitzGerald made much of 
the boy, and used to take him up to town to see 
the sights ; but he did not neglect his education, 
and diligently questioned him about the books they 
read. 

Meanwhile the affairs of FitzGerald's father had 
been going from bad to worse. He had been sinking 
all the money he could raise in developing the coal 
on his Manchester estates, and he had recklessly 
involved his friend and neighbour. Squire Jenny, in 
the same hapless enterprise. The unfortunate old man 
drove one morning to a friend's house, and hurried 
into his room saying, " I'm in a devil of a mess ! I'm 
ruined!" Mr. FitzGerald's effects at the Hall were 
sold up. Neither he nor Squire Jenny could rally 
from the blow, and they both died in the course of 
the next few months. To meet the claims of the 
Squire's creditors, the great pleasant woods on his es- 
tate were felled. Edward's allowance from his father 
came to an end ; but the greater part of his mother's 
property was fortunately secured to her, so that any 
diminution of resources from which he suffered was 
merely temporary. 

FitzGerald called on Miss Barton to tell her of 
his altered prospects, but renewed the pledge that he 
had made to her father that she should never be in 
want. It seems indeed probable that the delicacy 
which FitzGerald felt about offering Miss Barton a 



34 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

definite money allowcance was what eventually precipi- 
tated his resolution to offer her marriage. 

After her husband's death, FitzGerald's mother left 
the neighbourhood, settling at Richmond. But Fitz- 
Gerald made no change in his own habits, except 
that in this year he printed a book of extracts which 
he called Polonius : a Collection of Wise Saws and 
Modern Instances. "Not a book of Beauties," he de- 
scribed it in his preface, " other than as all who have 
the best to tell, have also naturally the best way of 
telling it " ; nor of the " limbs and outward flourishes 
of Truth, however eloquent ; but in general, and as 
far as I understand, of clear, decided, wholesome and 
available insight into our nature and duties. . . . The 
grand Truisms of life only life itself is said to bring 
to life." 

The introduction, which is a little stilted and dis- 
jointed, yet contains some fine passages, such as : — 

" And why," says the note-book of one nel mezzo del cammin 
di nostra vita, "does one day linger in my memory? I had 
started one fine October morning on a ramble through the 
villages that lie beside the Ouse. In high health and cloud- 
less spirits, one regret perhaps hanging upon the horizon of 
the heart, I walked through Sharnbrook up the hill, and 
paused by the church on the summit to look about me. The 
sun shone, the clouds flew, the yellow trees shook in the wind, 
the river rippled in breadths of light and dark ; rooks and 
daws wheeled and cawed aloft in the changing spaces of blue 
above the spire; the churchyard all still in the sunshine 
below." 

The book itself consists of extracts from such writers 
as Selden, Bacon, Newman, and Carlyle, and illustrates 
a graver and more serious view of life than FitzGerald's 
somewhat purposeless existence would have suggested. 
But the fact was that the lapse of time and the approach 



11.] MIDDLE LIFE 35 

of adversity had cast a shadow upon his Epicurean 
ease, and he had passed very quickly from a prolonged 
youth into a somewhat premature age. 

But the pressure of calamity did have one very 
practical effect upon FitzGerald ; it threw him, perhaps 
for the sake of distraction, into more continuous 
literary work than he had hitherto attempted. He 
was reading Spanish, which he had begun under the 
auspices of Cowell, and he now set to work to trans- 
late six of Calderon's plays. 

FitzGerald's principle was not to translate so much 
as to give a ''fine and efficient " equivalent. He "• sank, 
reduced, altered, and replaced." He tried to catch the 
spirit of the original and to produce a piece of literary 
work rather than a mere paraphrase. The book was 
published in 1853, and was so severely reviewed in the 
Athenoeum that FitzGerald endeavoured to withdraw it 
from circulation. It also received depreciatory notice 
in the Leader, in an article which it seems probable 
was written by G. H. Lewes. 

In the meantime the eldest brother, John Fitz- 
Gerald, settled at Boulge, and to Edward's pleasure 
allowed the timber on the estate to grow luxuriantly. 
Nothing was felled or lopped ; hedges grew up strong 
and dense, and the whole place became enveloped in a 
screen of vegetation. FitzGerald could not, however, 
face the close proximity of his brother, and deserted 
his cottage, sending his effects to Farlingay Hall, to 
which Mr. Job Smith had moved, and where Fitz- 
Gerald was now received as a lodger. He wrote to 
Carlyle describing his new quarters : — 

" I am at present staying with a Farmer in a very pleasant 
house near Woodbridge : inhabiting such a room as even you, 
I tliink, would sleep composedly in ; my host a taciturn, 
cautious, honest, active man whom I have known all my Life. 



36 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

He and his wife, a capital housewife, and his Son, who could 
cai-ry me ou his shoulders to Ipswich, and a ]\faid servant 
who, as she curtsies of a morning, lets fall the Tea-pot, etc., 
constitute the household." 

But he could not settle down. He drifted about 
more than ever, staying, for instance, at Bredfield with 
Crabbe for two months together. 

In 1853 FitzGerald took up the study of Persian ; 
Cowell, in the following year, published a translation 
of the Odes of Hafiz, and FitzGerald worked at 
Bredfield on a translation of Jami's Saldmdn and 
Absdl, which he published eventually in 1856. He 
spent some weeks at Oxford in Cowell's company, 
and there improved his knowledge of the language 
and literature. 

At Farlingay he bought a boat, which shows that his 
finances were not greatly depleted, and spent many 
hours in sailing on the Deben in company with Virgil, 
Juvenal, and Wesley's Journal. In the same year he 
visited Bath, where he met Landor, now in his 
eightieth year. " (He) has some hundred and fifty 
Pictures," FitzGerald wrote, " each of which he thinks 
the finest specimen of the finest Master, and has a 
long story about how he got it, when, etc. I dare 
say some are very good; but also some very bad. 
He appeared to me to judge of them as he does of 
Books and Men; with a most uncompromising per- 
versity which the Phrenologists must explain to us 
after his Death." 

In 1854 his mother died, and John succeeded to the 
estates, assuming the additional name of Purcell before 
FitzGerald. 

In the course of the year Carlyle, being over- 
worked, announced his intention of coming to stay 
with FitzGerald, who looked forward to the visit with 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 37 

amusement tempered with considerable apprehension. 
He begs Mrs. Carlyle to tell him what the Sage is to 
eat, drink, and avoid. He makes out elaborate way- 
bills for Carlyle, and assures him that he will have 
perfect freedom about work and exercise ; that he may 
smoke when and where he will ; and have " a capital 
sunshiny airy Bedroom without any noise." " If you 
don't find yourself well," he adds, "or at ease with us, 
you have really but to go, without any sort of Cere- 
mony, as soon as you like." 

Carlyle replies in a characteristic strain. " It will be 
pleasant," he writes, " to see your face at the end of 
my shrieking, mad, (and to me quite horrible) rail 
operations." . . . " I hope to get to Farlingay not long 
after four o'clock, and have a quiet mutton chop in due 
time, and have a ditto pipe or pipes : nay, I could even 
have a bathe if there was any sea water left in the 
evening." The visit went off better than could have 
been expected. Carlyle wrote of FitzGerald after- 
wards as a " lonely, shy, kind-hearted man, who dis- 
charged the sacred rites (of hospitality) with a kind of 
Irish zeal or piety." His only complaint was that he 
was not left quite enough alone ; and he was graciously 
pleased to observe of FitzGerald's friends that he " did 
not fare intolerably with them." The weather was good, 
and the sage sat much in the open air, under an elm, 
reading. When he departed, he chose the steamer, 
declining to be shut np in a railway carriage " like a 
great codfish in a hamper." On his return he sent 
FitzG-erald a new inscription for the Naseby monument, 
which was to be signed by FitzGerald, and to end with 
the words " Peace henceforth to these old Dead." He 
seems to have enjoyed his visit, and wrote, a month 
afterwards : " On the whole I say, when you get your 
little Suffolk cottage, you must have in it a ' chamber 



38 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

in the wall ' for me, 2^his a pony that can trot, and a 
cow that gives good milk ; with these outfits we shall 
make a pretty rustication now and then, not wholly 
Latrappish, but only hcdf, on much easier terms than 
here ; and I for one shall be right willing to come and 
try it, I for one party, . . . After the beginning of next 
week, I am at Chelsea, and (I dare say) there is a fire 
in the evenings now to welcome you there. Show face 
in some way or other. And so adieu, for my hour of 
riding is at hand." 

The serene egotism of this letter is very characteris- 
tic ; and Carlyle's view of hospitality, that everything 
should be arranged for the comfort of the guest con- 
cerned, shows the lack of courtesy that differentiates 
him so strongly from his host. 

In 1856 came a joy and sorrow hand in hand. 
Browne, who had been long absent on garrison duty 
in Ireland, during the Crimean War, returned to Gold- 
ington, " a bloody warrior," as FitzGerald called him. 
But the beloved Cowell had also accepted a Professor- 
ship of History at Calcutta, and FitzGerald's heart was 
heavy. Every detail of the last day he spent with 
the Cowells — the scent and stir of the hayfield, the 
echo of his own husky voice — dwelt with FitzGerald 
for many a day. 

FitzGerald could not face the parting with these 
dear friends. He wrote : — 

"My DEAR Edward and Elizabeth Cowell, — I think 
it is best for many reasons that I should )iot go to see you 
again — to say a Good-Bye that costs me so much. 

" I shall very soon write to you; and hope to keep up 
something of Communion by such meagre Intercourse. Do 
you do the same to me. Farewell, Both ! Ever yours, 

Ed.'^EitzG." 

In the October of the same year FitzGerald met 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 39 

George Borrow, tlien living in a lonely house near 
Oulton Broad, and busy Avriting the Romany Rye. 
FitzGerald found this strange pilgrim's masterful man- 
ners and irritable temper uncongenial. Yet he said 
long after that he was almost the only friend Borrow 
had never quarrelled with. 

And then befell what must be considered the greatest 
mistake of FitzGerald's life, his marriage to Miss 
Barton. It is difficult to realise exactly what the 
relations of the pair at this time were. At some period 
or other they must have become definitely engaged, 
possibly when FitzGerald discovered that he would still 
be in comparatively easy circumstances. It is clear, 
at all events, that about this time he began to consider 
himself pledged to marry Miss Barton; he wrote, soon 
after his marriage, " had good sense and experience 
prevailed ... it would never have been completed ! 
You know my opinion of a ' Man of Taste,' never so 
dangerous as when tied down to daily Life Com- 
panionhood." FitzGerald had discussed the matter 
with Browne, who foresaw nothing but unhappiness as 
the result of this ill-assorted union. " Give her anything 
you like but your hand," he said. W. H. Thompson 
had also strongly urged him to make an honourable 
withdrawal. Indeed Miss Barton herself begged him 
to termina.te the engagement, if he did not think 
the marriage would be for his happiness. But Fitz- 
Gerald was obstinate, with the obstinacy of a weak 
and sensitive nature. He expected no great accession 
to his happiness — there was indeed little romance 
possible for these middle-aged lovers, both nearer 
fifty than forty — and the utmost FitzGerald seems 
to have hoped was that he might be allowed to 
continue his easy-going independent life in the 
company of one, many of whose qualities he admired. 



40 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Probably, like many indecisive people, lie did not 
know how much his own habits had crystallised. 
The marriage took place at Chichester on Kovember 
4, 1856; the newly married pair went to Brighton, 
and then settled for a time at 31 Great Portland 
Street, London. A few days of married life were 
enough to disillusionise FitzGerald. He found him- 
self the husband of a kindly, conventional, methodical 
woman, who looked forward to her marriage with a 
man of comparative wealth and of assured social stand- 
ing as an opportunity to live a thoroughly ordinary, 
commonplace life, with all the customary accompani- 
ments of visits and parties. Mrs. FitzGerald wanted 
her husband to pay calls, to receive visitors, to dress 
for dinner. Perhaps if she had shown greater tact 
and sympathy she might have made herself indis- 
pensable to her husband's happiness. If she had 
realised her position as the wife of an able and some- 
what eccentric man, and arranged their life to suit 
his requirements, it would have been a contented and 
might have been a happy marriage. But it was the 
other way ; Mrs. PitzGerald had her own theory of 
married life, and seems to have thought that she could 
influence her husband into conformity. FitzGerald, on 
the other hand, was not less to blame ■, he made no 
concessions, no sacrifice of tastes ; he held on his way, 
and appears to have felt that he might have asserted 
himself ; but he shrank with horror from the conflict 
involved. After a fortnight they separated for five 
weeks, her husband joining her at Geldestone ; and 
again took up their quarters in Portland Terrace, 
Eegent's Park. FitzGerald sank into the extremest 
dejection ; writing to Cowell about their parting, he 
said : " I believe there are new channels fretted in 
my cheeks with many unmanly tears since then " ; 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 41 

and again : " Till I see better how we get on, I dare 
fix on no place to live or die in." Bnt he worked on 
at his Persian, and though he had little heart for work, 
he produced a translation of Attar's Bird ParUament, 
not published till after his death. They lingered on in 
London, and in April he received letters from CowelL 
In a vein of hopeless depression he writes : — 

"Yours and your wife's dear good Letters put into my 
hand as I sit in the sunshine in a little Balcony outside the 
Windows looking upon the quite green hedge side of the 
Regent's Park. For Green it is thus early, and such weather 
as I never remember before at this Season. Well, your Letters, 
I say, were put into my hand as I was looking into ^schylus 
under an Umbrella, and waiting for Breakfast. My wife cried 
a good deal over your wife's Letter I think, I think so. Ah 
me ! I would not as yet read it, for I was already sad ; but 
I shall answer hers to me which I did read indeed with many 
thoughts." 

The ill-assorted pair then tried life in the country, 
at Gorleston near Yarmouth, but FitzGerald got no 
pleasure except in visits to Browne. At last, after 
dismal self-communing, he made up his mind. There 
was no definite separation, but after this date Fitz- 
Gerald never rejoined his wife, and eventually a liberal 
allowance was placed at her disposal. She went to 
live at Hastings, then at Croydon. FitzGerald summed 
up the situation at a later period : — 

"Not less do I thank you sincerely for what you say 
than for the kindly reticence you have always shown in the 
matter of Mrs. E. F. G. You know well enough, from your 
own as well as your husband's knowledge of the case, that 
/ am very much to blame, both on the score of stupidity in 
taking so wrong a step, and want of courageous principle in 
not making the best of it when taken. She has little to 
blame herself for, except in fancying she knew both me and 
herself better than 1 had over and over again told her was 



42 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

the truth before marriage. Well, I won't say more. I think 
you will admit that she is far better off than she ivas, and as 
I feel sure, ever ivould have been living with me. She was 
brought up to rule; and though I believe she would have 
submitted to be a slave, it would have been at too great a 
price to her, and I doubt no advantage to me. She can now 
take her own way, live where she likes, have what society 
she likes, etc., while every year and every day I am creeping 
out of the world in my own way." 

EitzGerald and his wife sometimes exchanged letters ; 
but though Mrs. FitzGerald endeavoured to persuade 
her husband to see her, she never prevailed. She 
always spoke affectionately of him. Once indeed they 
met face to face, as will be hereafter related ; but they 
never interchanged another word. FitzGerald fell 
back at once, with an extreme sense of relief, into his 
lonely ways, though deeply annoyed at the criticisms 
on his action which came to his ears. 

To add to his unhappiness, his old friend Crabbe 
fell ill ; he wrote of it to Cowell : — 

" Fii'st, however, I must tell you how much ill poor Crabbe 
has been : a sort of Paralysis, I suppose, in two little fits, 
which made him think he was sure to die ; but Dr. Beck at 
present says he may live many years with care. Of this also 
I shall be able to tell you more before I wind up. The brave 
old Fellow ! he was quite content to depart, and had his 
Daughter up to give her his Keys, and tell her where the 
different wines were laid ! I must also tell you that Borrow 
is greatly delighted with your MS. of Omar which I showed 
him : delighted at the terseness so unusual in Oriental Verse. 
But his Eyes are apt to cloud ; and his wife has been obliged, 
he tells me, to cany off even the little Omar out of reach of 
them for a while. . . ." 

The exact circumstances which led to FitzGerald's 
making acquaintance with the Quatrains of Omar will 
be related lower down. But the above extract shows 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 43 

that he was at this time at work upon the translation 
of the book, which, after a year's fruitless sojourn in 
an editor's drawer, was to see the light in 1859. 

But, to resume, in September 1857, his old friend 
died at Bredfield. FitzGerald wrote to Crabbe's son, 
in a way which showed that he felt a real sympathy 
with Mrs. FitzGerald's isolated position. " I want your 
sisters so much to go to my wife at Gorleston when 
they can. I am convinced that their going to her would 
be the very thing for herself, poor soul ; taking her out 
of herself, and giving her the very thing she is pining 
for, namely, some one to devote herself to." FitzGer- 
ald went to Crabbe's funeral ; and then wandered to 
London, where a blow that he had never dreamed of 
fell upon him. The beloved Browne, Phidippus, the 
gallant horseman, was out hunting on the 28th of 
January 1859, when his horse, accidentally touched by 
some rider's whip, reared and fell upon him. He was 
carried home, and lingered for nine weeks in hopeless 
agony, borne gallantly and courageously. FitzGerald 
hurried to Goldington, but could not be persuaded 
to face an interview with his friend. At last he over- 
came the shrinking; he wrote to Donne from 
Goldington : — 

" Your folks told you on what Errand I left your house 
so abruptly. I was not allowed to see "W. B. the day I 
came : nor yesterday till 3 p.m. ; when, poor fellow, he tried 
to write a line to me, like a child's ! and I went, and saw, 
no longer the gay Lad, nor the healthy IMan, I had known : 
but a wreck of all that : a Face like Charles i. (after 
decapitation almost) above the Clothes : and the poor shat- 
tered Body underneath lying as it had lain eight weeks; 
such a case as the Doctor says he had never known. Instead 
of the light utterance of other days too, came the slow, painful 
syllables in a far lower Key : and when the old familiar words, 



44 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

'Old Fellow — Fitz.' — etc., came forth, so spoken, I broke 
down too in spite of foregone Resolution. 

" They thought he'd die last Night : but this Morning he 
is a little better : but no hope. He has spoken of me in the 
Night, and (if he wishes) I shall go again, provided his Wife 
and Doctor approve. But it agitates him : and Tears he 
could not wipe away came to his Eyes. The poor Wife bears 
up wonderfully." 

And again to Mr. Aldis Wright : — 

"... I was by his Bedside, where he lay (as for three 
months he had lain) broken in half almost ; yet he looked at 
me with his old discrimination and said, ' I suppose you have 
scarce ever been with a dying person before? ' He had rare 
intuition into Men, Matters, and even into Matters of Art: 
though Thackeray would call him ' Little Browne ' — which 
I told him he was not justified in doing. They are equal 
now." 

On the next day, Sunday, the 27th of March, while 
waiting for Browne to die, FitzGerald wrote two pa- 
thetic inscriptions in the Godefridus of Kenelm Digby, 
and the Euphranor, copies of which he had himself 
given to his friend in the old days. 

" This book," ran the first, " I gave my dear 
W. K. B. about twenty years ago ; when then be- 
lieving it, and believing it now, to contain a char- 
acter of himself (especially at pp. 89, etc.), though 
he might be the last to negotiate it as his own like- 
ness. I now think his son cannot do better than read 
it, with the light his father's example sheds upon it." 

In the Euphranor he wrote, " This little book would 
never have been written, had I not known my dear 
friend William Browne, who, unconsciously, supplied 
the moral." 

These sad inscriptions are like the scrawls of some 
disconsolate prisoner, with the weight of doom lying 
heavy on his heart. 



II.] MIDDLE LIFE 45 

They had not long to wait. On the 30th of March 
Browne died. 

FitzGerald had exhausted the depths of grief; he 
wrote to Cowell : — 

"... I have had a great Loss. W. Browne was fallen 
upon and half crushed by his horse near three montlis ago : and 
though the Doctors kept giving hopes while he lay j)atient]y 
for two months in a condition no one else could have borne 
for a Fortnight, at last they could do no more, nor Nature 
neither : and he sunk. I went to see him before he died — 
the comely spirited Boy I had known first seven-and-twenty 
years ago — lying all shattered and Death in his Face and 
Voice. . . . 

"Well, this is so : and there is no more to be said about 
it. It is one of the things that reconcile me to my own 
stupid Decline of Life — to the crazy state of the world — 
Well — no more about it." 

He was sent some little mementoes of Browne ; but 
he could not return to Goldington ; and he lay under 
the shadow of his loss for many days. 



CHAPTER III 

LATER TEARS 

In 18G0 FitzGerald pitched his moving tent in 
Woodbridge Market-place, over a gun-maker's shop. 
He crammed his little rooms with all his books and 
pictures, and took up again the thread of his lonely 
life. He was now in flourishing circumstances, as his 
mother's death had put him in possession of nearly 
a thousand a year ; but the idea of a settled home, 
which sometimes occurred to him, was overshadowed 
by the thought of the troubles of housekeeping. He 
wrote at this date the poem called " Virgil's Garden 
laid out a la Delille," an idyll which appeared long 
after in Temple Bar. Mr. Job Smith of Farlingay 
died, and young Alfred settled at a farm called 
Sutton Hoo, a house just across the river, approached 
by a ferry. FitzGerald had a small yacht built, which 
he called TJie Scandal, saying that he named it after 
the main staple of Woodbridge, and adding that all 
other possible names had been used up. His skipper 
was one Thomas Newson, a smart sailor, with a 
nasal twang, and a head perched on one side, " like 
a magpie looking in a quart pot," as FitzGerald once 
said — adding, " He is always smiling, yet the wretched 
fellow is the father of twins " ; in this yacht, which 
was a great resource to him, he took many cruises, 
once even going as far as Holland. 
He v.-rote to Cowell : — 

46 



CHAP. III.] LATER YEARS 47 

" My chief Amusement in Life is Boating, on River and 
Sea. The Country about here is the Cemetery of so many 
of my oldest Friends: and the petty race of Squires who 
have succeeded only use the Earth for an Investment: cut 
down every old Tree : level every Violet Bank : and make 
the old Country of my Youth hideous to me in my Decline. 
There are fewer Birds to be heard, as fewer Trees for them 
to resort to. So I get to the Water : where Friends are not 
buried nor Pathways stopt up : but all is, as the Poets say, 
as Creation's Dawn beheld. I am happiest going in my 
little Boat round the Coast to Aldbro', with some Bottled 
Porter and some Bread and Cheese, and some good rough 
Soul who works the Boat and chews his Tobacco in i^eace. 
An Aldbro' Sailor talking of my Boat said — ' She go like a 
Wiolin, she do ! ' What a pretty Conceit, is it not? As the 
Bow slides over the Strings in a liquid Tune. Another man 
was talking yesterday of a great Storm : ' and, in a moment, 
all as calm as a Clock.' " 

But all this was in the pleasant summer when life 
went easily. It was far different in the short wet 
winter days ; he wrote to George Crabbe : — 

" By the bye, don't let me forget to ask you to bring with 
you my Persian Dictionary in case you come into these Parts. 
I read very very little, and get very desultory : hut when 
AVinter comes again must take to some dull Study to keep 
from Suicide, I suppose. The River, the Sea, etc., serve to 
divert one now." 

But death was busy among FitzGerald's circle, and 
he began to feel the unhappiness of having made so 
many friends among those older than himself. The 
sense of the brevity, the swift passage of life, began 
to haunt him like an obsession. His sister Eleanor, 
Mrs. Kerrich, died in 1863. "The good die," he 
wrote to Mrs. Browne, " they sacrifice themselves 
for others; she never thought of herself, only her 
children. ... I will not go to the wa-etched funeral, 



48 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

where there are plenty of mourners, but I shall go to 
Geldestone when they wish me." Late in the year 
Thackeray died, at the age of fifty-two ; and FitzGerald 
began to live in the past more than ever, in the good 
old days. He still could not forget his wife. He 
wrote to Mrs. Browne : — 

" The last I heard of Mrs. E. F. G. was that she had gone 
to Brighton, where I suppose she finds the greatest number 
of ' God's afflicted children,' among whom she proposed to 
spend the remainder of her days. Do you hear from her? " 

In 1864 FitzGerald made up his mind to buy a 
little farmhouse near Woodbridge, but he did not at 
once take up his residence there. He called it Grange 
Farm, but afterwards altered the name to Littlegrange. 
In the same year came another great friendship. He 
made the acquaintance of a stalwart sailor named 
Joseph Fletcher, commonly called Posh. It was at 
Lowestoft that he was found, where FitzGerald used, 
as he wrote in 1859, " to wander about the shore at 
night longing for some fellow to accost me who might 
give some promise of filling up a very vacant place 
in my heart." Posh had seen the melancholy figure 
wandering about, and, years after, when FitzGerald 
used to ask him why he had not been merciful enough 
to speak to him, Posh would reply that he had not 
thought it becoming. 

Posh was, in FitzGerald's own words, "a man of 
the finest Saxon type, with a complexion vif, mdle et 
flamboyant, blue eyes, a nose less than Eoman, more 
than Greek, and strictly auburn hair that any woman 
might sigh to possess." He was, too, according to 
FitzGerald, "a man of simplicity of soul, justice of 
thought, tenderness of nature, a gentleman of Nature's 
grandest type." FitzGerald became deeply devoted 



m.] LATER YEARS 49 

to this big-handed, soft-hearted, grave fellow, then 
twenty-four years of age. FitzGerald thus wrote of 
him to Laurence : — 

" The Great Man ... is yet there : commanding a Crew 
of those whopreferbeinghisMen to having command of their 
own. And they are right ; for the man is Royal, tho' with 
the faults of ancient Vikings. . . . His Glory is somewhat 
marred ; but he looks every inch a King in his Lugger now. 
At home (when he is there, and not at the Tavern) he sits 
among his Dogs, Cats, Birds, etc., always with a great Dog 
following abroad, and aboard. This is altogether the Great- 
est Man I have known." 

And again to the same : — 

" You will see ... a little of his simplicity of Soul ; 
but not the Justice of Thought, Tenderness of Nature, and 
all the other good Gifts which make him a Gentleman of 
Nature's grandest type." 

And again to Spalding : ^ — 

" Oh, these [Posh and his wife] are the People who some- 
how interest me ; and if I were not now too far advanced on 
the Road to Forgetfulness, I should be sad that my own life 
had been such a wretched Concern in comparison. But it is 
too late, even to lament, now. . . ." 

And again to the same, of entering a church at Yar- 
mouth with Posh : — 

"... when Posh pulled off his Cap, and stood erect but 
not irreverent, I thought he looked as good an Image of the 
Mould that Man was originally cast in as you may chance to 
see in the Temple of the Maker in these Days. The Artillery 
were blazing away on the Denes ; and the little Band-master, 
who played with his Troop here last summer, joined us as we 
were walking, and told Posh not to lag behind, for he was 
not at all ashamed to be seen walking with him. The little 
Well-meaning Ass ! " 

1 Frederick Spalding^ died 1902, an autiquary and archaeolo- 
gist, curator of the Castle Mnseuui at Colchester ; formerly a 
neighbour of FitzGerald's at Wood bridge. 
B 



50 EDWAED FITZGERALD [chap. 

It must be coufessed that a good deal of senti- 
mentality was wasted over this sea-lion. Nothing 
that Posh might do could be criticised. Thus on 
one occasion it is related that Posh, after being 
sumptuously feasted at FitzGerald's lodgings, lay down 
at full length on the sofa. Mr. Alfred Smith, who 
was present, and thought that this was taking a 
liberty, remarked upon it. " Poor fellow ! " said Fitz- 
Gerald, " look how tired he is ! " Posh's one failing 
was drink, to which he occasionally gave Avay. But 
FitzGerald could not bear to judge him severely ; he 
wrote to Spalding of one of these lapses : — 

" I declare that it makes me feel ashamed very much to 
play the Judge on one who stands immeasurably above me 
in the scale, whose faults are better than so many virtues. 
Was not this very outbreak that of a great genial Boy among 
his old Fellows? True, a Promise was broken. Yes, but if 
the whole man be of the Royal Blood of Humanity, and 
do Justice in the Main, what are the people to say ? " 

Among other kindnesses FitzGerald built a herring- 
lugger for Posh, retaining the interest of a partner; 
he named it the Meum and Tuum; but it did not prove 
a successful venture, and it was afterwards made over 
to Posh altogether. 

But among his diversions FitzGerald did not forget 
his literary work: he took up Calderon again and 
translated two more plays, Hie Mighty Magician and 
Such Stuff as Dreams are made of, which appeared 
in 1865. 

He also began to improve his house, adding rooms 
and altering, draining, and planting his five or six 
acres. He was difficult to satisfy. He would order a 
piece of building to be done, come wandering up, and 
presently give orders for its demolition. He cruised 
about a good deal, visiting the south coast of England 



III.] LATER YEARS 51 

as far as the Isle of Wight ; and planned abbreviations 
of big books like Clarissa Hadoice and Wesley 's Journal, 
a species of task in which he took a peculiar delight. 
But he was full of melancholy moods. Death seemed 
" to rise like a wall " against him whichever way he 
looked. He wrote to Allen : " When I read Boswell 
and other Memoirs now, Avhat presses on me most is — 
All these people who talked and acted so busily are 
gone." He finished, too, his translation of the 
Agamemnon, which he printed in the same year, 1865, 
without a title-page, and had bound in an ugly blue 
wrapper. "When one has done one's best," he wrote 
to Cowell, " one likes to make an end of the matter 
by print. ... I suppose very few people have ever 
taken such Pains in Translation as I have." 

At this time John PitzGerald was in a condition of 
high rhetorical fervour. Wherever he could get an 
audience to address he hurried thither. He was the 
despair of meetings at which he took the chair, 
because the chairman's address invariably consumed 
the whole of the evening; and whatever the subject 
of the lecturer might be, John FitzGerald spoke 
fervently of temperance and the abominations of 
Rome. He undressed himself on these occasions more 
industriously than ever, hurled grease about and 
knocked hats off pegs. " We FitzGeralds are all mad," 
said Edward, " but John is the maddest of the family, 
for he does not know it." John gave way to moods 
of deep melancholy ; put a clock in every room at 
Boulge, yet whenever he desired to know the time he 
would ring for his valet to tell him. Yet all the while 
he continued to live like a man of position and for- 
tune ; kept many servants and horses, and criticised his 
brother Edward's wardrobe severely. " The difference 
between John and me," said FitzGerald, " is this : 



52 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

John goes and does things that he knows nothing 
about — the most unheard-of things — and thinks he's 
perfectly right ; while if I want to do anything, I go 
to some one who understands and get advice, which, 
as a rule, to my misfortune, I don't follow." 

An old fishmonger called Levi, in Woodbridge, used 
to inquire affectionately after John FitzGerald when- 
ever Edward entered the shop, ^'And how is the 
General, bless him ? " " How many times," FitzGerald 
used to say, "Mr. Levi, must I tell you that my 
brother is not a General, and was never in the Army? " 
" Ah, well, it's my mistake, no doubt ! But, anyhow, 
bless him ! " 

FitzGerald was much delighted with his friend 
Thompson's appointment to the Mastership of Trinity 
in 1866, and wrote to Allen : — 

" I have written to congratulate him in a sober way on 
his Honours; for, at our Time of Life, I think exultation 
would be unseasonable on either side. He will make a mag- 
nanimous Master, I believe ; doing all the Honours of his 
Station well, if he have health." 

In the same year Cowell returned from India on 
furlough; but FitzGerald, with a shy perversity, 
seemed unable to take up the old relations ; he wrote 
to Cowell : — 

" This time ten years — a month ago — we were all loung- 
ing about in a hayfield before your Mother's House at Rush- 
mere. I do not forget these things : nor cease to remember 
them with a sincere, sad, and affectionate interest : the very 
sincerity of which prevents me from attempting to re-create 
them. This I wish you and yours, who have been so kind 
to me, to believe." 

But in 1867, to FitzGerald's great delight, Cowell 
obtained the Professorship of Sanskrit at Cambridge, 
and the old intercourse was gradually resumed. 



III.] LATER YEARS 63 

Fitzgerald cruised a good deal in the summer of 
1867 ; but his deiinite rambles grew fewer ; he came 
to love his fireside and his own lonely leisurely ways 
more and more. " I run home like a beaten dog," he 
said, speaking of his brief visits to other parts of 
England. 

It was at this time that FitzGerald, walking briskly 
with Posh in Woodbridge Thoroughfare, saw a female 
form drawing near and a glove being removed. " It's 
my wife ! " said FitzGerald in a tone of tremulous 
excitement. They met, exchanged looks, held out 
their hands, but FitzGerald's courage failed at the 
last moment, and withdrawing his hand he said: 
"Come along, Posh," and stalked away. 

From this time dates FitzGerald's close friendship 
with Mr. Aldis Wright, his biographer and editor ; 
the occasion being that Dr. Thompson, the Master of 
Trinity, expressed a wish to have FitzGerald's works 
in the University Library, and it fell to Mr. Aldis 
Wright to carry out the desire. 

In 1868 came out the second edition of the Omar. At 
this time FitzGerald was also occupied in a task, which 
to him was a perpetual delight, of rescuing racy terms 
of local or nautical origin from obscurity. He seems 
to have had that peculiar pleasure in the outward physi- 
ognomy of words, words with old and far-off traditions, 
or words that grew, as it were, out of the soil, expres- 
sive, racy, vernacular phrases. He used to send them 
to the East Anglian. Many of them were drawn from 
the talk of Posh, and FitzGerald, with the sensitive 
feeling, so characteristic of him, which led him to 
credit others with his own sensibilities, carefully con- 
cealed from Posh that he made any public use of these 
words. One day, however, he handed Posh by mistake 
a proof of one of these contributious to light his pipe 



54 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

with. Posh began to read the paper, and FitzGerald, 
realising his mistake, said : " Well, is that wrong ? " 
" I don't see but it's all right enough, sir," said Posh 
with ready tact. " With perfect nnconsciousness," 
said FitzGrerald, in relating the incident to W. F. 
Pollock, adding maliciously: "In this he differs from 
the Laureate." 

In 1870 FitzGerald had Posh's portrait painted by 
Samuel Laurence, that it might hang side by side with 
the same artist's portraits of Tennysou and Thackeray, 
as his three greatest friends, — but Posh was the greatest. 

In the same year FitzGerald parted with the Meum 
and Tuum to Posh, who thus became sole owner, and 
celebrated the occasion by a great bout of conviviality. 
" Keep from the drink, there's a dear fellow," Fitz- 
Gerald wrote to him. He induced Posh to sign the 
pledge, but after breaking down, Posh refused to renew 
it. FitzGerald comforted himself by thinking what 
Carlyle had said about great men's faults, and seems 
to have considered Posh, if anything, rather nobler 
than before. 

In 1871, reaching his grand climacteric, FitzGerald 
felt a diminution of vitality ; he parted with his boat ; 
he made his will ; and finding his eyes trouble him, he 
had recourse again to boy readers. 

In 1872 he had a visit from Frederic Tennyson, who 
was then deeply interested in spiritualistic xahenomena. 
FitzGerald took Posh to Lowestoft, and they went 
together to see the Merchant of Venice, Posh sleeping 
soundly through the performance. In the next year 
began a correspondence with Professor C. E. Norton ; 
and through him arrived a letter from Ruskin praising 
the Omar Khayydm, which had remained ten years in 
the hand of Burne-Jones, to whom Puskin had en- 
trusted it; a curious voice out of the past. At the 



III.] LATER YEARS 55 

end of the year FitzGerald was forced to move from 
his Woodbridge lodgings. Mr. Berry, his landlord, 
became engaged to marry a widow. FitzGerald, who 
was fond of smoking and chatting with Berry in the 
evenings, did not relish the introdiiction of the new 
element, and said rather cavistically that " old Berry 
would now have to be called 'Old Gooseberry.'" This 
rash witticism was repeated to the widow; and the 
upshot was that Berry gave him notice to quit. Berry 
did not like the task of breaking with his old friend 
and lodger, and came cautiously upstairs to announce 
the decision. His helpmeet, fearing that his courage 
might give way, remained at the bottom of the stairs 
calling out: " Be firm, Berry ! Remind him of what he 
called you." 

FitzGerald seems to have had an invincible objection 
to occupying his own house ; accordingly, on being 
ejected, he hired another room in an adjacent house, 
where he transferred his Penates. But he was losing 
his zest for life. In 1874 he wrote that he was begin- 
ning to have warnings of the end : " I find life little 
worth now; not that I am unhappy, but so wofully 
indifferent." 

At last, however, he installed himself in his own 
house, Littlegrange ; but he would only inhabit one 
room, a large downstairs parlour, which he divided by 
folding-doors. The living-room was full of books, with 
a high-standing desk. In the hall close by stood an 
organ, on which he often played, always from memory, 
drawing out of it a great richness of melody, and 
crooning an air himself as the excitement grew. 

He furnished the rest of the house with some care and 
dignity, and left it for the use of his nieces, whenever 
they chose to visit him ; but even when they were in 
the house, he was little with them; he took his meals 



56 EDWAED FITZGERALD [chap. 

alone ; and sometimes for clays together only saw them 
for a few minutes in the garden, where he would saunter 
along a winding shrubbery walk, with his plaid about 
him, wearing blue glasses, and a shade over his eyes, 
which were often painful. He would often be heard 
humming over to himself old songs in his weak, true 
voice. Sunday afternoons he would spend with Alfred 
Smith at Sutton Hoo, in an arbour, sipping a glass of 
wine and talking of the old days. He consulted a 
doctor about this time, who told him that his heart was 
affected. This was good news to FitzGerald, who 
manifested singular cheerfulness at the announcement, 
as holding out to him a prospect of the sudden death 
which he desired. In the same year Spedding finished 
his monumental edition of Bacon, the fourteenth volume 
appearing at that date (1874). "I always look upon 
old Spedding's as one of the most wasted lives I know," 
said FitzGerald cheerfully, adding that Spedding had 
only succeeded in establishing that view of Bacon's 
character which he set out to dissipate. 

In the same year FitzGerald paid a pilgrimage to 
Abbotsf ord, and found himself full of emotion; but he 
could now less and less bear to be away from home, 
and hurried back to Littlegrange after three days. 

One of FitzGerald's chief correspondents at this 
time was Fanny Kemble, whom he sincerely loved, 
though he confessed he did not care for her acting. 
She was a lively, witty, vivacious woman, with a tender 
heart ; she wrote in 1875 some reminiscences of Fitz- 
Gerald and others, which appeared in the Atlantic 
Monthly, but they were couched in so eulogistic a style 
that FitzGerald felt bound to paste a piece of paper, 
in his own copy, over the passage which concerned 
himself. His letters to her, tender, fanciful, affec- 
tionate, are among the best he wrote. 



HI.] LATER YEAES 57 

In 1876 Tennyson appeared at Woodbriclge with his 
son Hallam. FitzGerald, who had not seen his old 
friend for twenty years, was characteristically pleased 
to find that the son called his father " Papa," and not 
" Governor." Thinking that his visitors would not 
be comfortable at Littlegrange, he installed them at 
the Bull Inn. They revived old memories, and Fitz- 
Gerald took occasion to tell Tennyson that he had 
better not have written anything after 1842, adding 
that he had ceased to be a poet, and had become an 
artist, a remark which Tennyson seems to have taken 
in good part. It is amusing to note that in the course 
of the evening they spent together PitzGerald uttered 
some pieces of local gossip which he thought indis- 
creet, for he said to Tennyson gravely : " Don't let 
this go to the Bull." 

Tennyson seems to have been much struck by the 
picture presented by PitzGerald, who sat talking un- 
der a tree, with his hair moving in the wind, and his 
pigeons alighting on his hand or shoulder, curtseying 
or cooing, and he embodied the scene in the Dedication 
to his Tiresias volume, which FitzGerald did not live 
to see : — 



" Old Eitz, who from your suburb grange, 

"Where once I tarried for a while, 
Glance at the wheeling Orb of change, 

And greet it with a kindly smile ; 
Whom yet I see as there you sit 

Beneath your sheltering garden-tree, 
And while your doves about you flit, 

And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee, 
Or on your head their rosy feet. 

As if they knew your diet spares 
Whatever moved in that full sheet, 

Let down to Peter at his prayers ; 
Who live on milk and meal and grass." 



58 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

In 1877 and 1878 FitzGerald amused himself by- 
contributing local notes to the Ipswich Journal, signing 
them Effigy, which stood for E. F. G. But shadows 
fell across the peaceful path. In 1877 one of his old 
friends, a boatman named West, died ; and FitzGerald 
could no longer bear the pleasant reaches of the Deben, 
where they had so often sailed together. A nephew 
too died, Maurice, the son of John FitzGerald, a 
young man of some literary promise, who had pub- 
lished a version of the Hippolytus, but with family 
irresolution had failed to make the most of his 
gifts. 

In 1878 he drew up and printed a Chronology of 
the life of Charles Lamb. " I drew it up for myself," 
he writes, " becau.se I often find myself puzzled about 
the dates in the dear fellow's life." Pollock called the 
book '' Cotelette d'Agneau a la Minute," and the name 
pleased FitzGerald ; he himself naming it '' Some 
Stepping-stones in dear Charles Lamb." 

In 1879 Omar appeared again in the fourth edition, 
bound up with Saldrndii and Ahsdl. And in the same 
year FitzGerald brought out his little book, Readings 
from Crabbe, with an introduction. He was pleased 
with the book, and thought it " very dexterously " done. 

" Then — my Crabbe is printing — Hurrah, Boys ! " 
he wrote to Pollock. 

The writings of Crabbe had always possessed a great 
fascination for FitzGerald. The cause of this is not 
far to seek. FitzGerald had the strong perception of 
the beauty and interest of ordinary and homely life 
which Crabbe felt so strongly. FitzGerald found 
himself too in harmony with one who tried to see life 
steadily, without either disguising or improving it. 
Then, too, Crabbe's aromatic humour pleased him, a 
humour which was not inconsistent with a strong 



HI.] LATER YEARS 59 

sense of the pathos and sadness of life; and here 
again FitzGerald was in tune with the poet. Even 
the very artlessness of Crabbe, which led to his 
being called "Pope in worsted stockings," pleased 
FitzGerald ; he says in the little introduction which 
he published to his selection from the Tales of the 
Hall, that the book " shares with the Poet's other 
works in the characteristic disregard of form and 
diction — of all indeed that is now called ' Art.' " 
FitzGerald had indeed little sympathy with the 
modern claims of art. The view which would make 
of art a kind of holy and solemn creed, an esoteric 
and mystical initiation, preaching the duty of "self- 
effectuation " for the artist — this was instinctively 
repugnant to FitzGerald. He quotes with approval 
Scott's breezy dictum that he did not care a curse for 
what he wrote. The brotherhood of art, with its dif- 
ficult secrets, its consecration, its vocation, would have 
seemed to FitzGerald little better than nonsense. His 
view rather was that one who loved beauty and man 
might speak, as simply and directly as he could, with- 
out undue care for stateliness and propriety of expres- 
sion, of what was in his heart. This was his own way 
and this was Crabbe's way. 

In his old age, FitzGerald found himself loving the 
Tales of the Hall better than the earlier work, with its 
more bitter and saturnine flavour. He says, quoting 
Sir Walter Scott, that " its characters look back with 
a kind of humorous retrospect over their own lives, 
cheerfully extending to others the same kindly in- 
dulgence which they solicit for themselves." "The 
book, if I mistake not," he goes on, " deals rather 
with the follies than with the vices of men, with the 
comedy rather than with the tragedy of life. And 
even the more sombre subjects of the book are 



60 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

relieved by the colloquial intercourse of the narrators, 
which twines about every story, and, letting in occa- 
sional glimpses of the country round, encircles them 
all with something of dramatic unity and interest, 
insomuch that of all the Poet's works this one alone 
does not leave a more or less melancholy impression 
upon me ; and, as I am myself more than old enough 
to love the sunny side of the wall, is on that account, 
I do not say the best, but certainly that which I like 
best of all his numerous offspring." 

FitzGerald treats Crabbe as he was inclined to treat 
all his favourites ; in some cases he transposes Crabbe's 
narrative to make it clearer ; and it seems that he 
must have amused himself by making marginal altera- 
tions in his own copy, of expressions which seemed to 
him to be faulty ; for he apologises for the possible 
intrusion of such alterations into the text. "Any 
poetaster," he adds, " can amend many a careless 
expression which blemishes a passage that none but 
a poet could indite." 

He is well aware of the fact that Crabbe is a poet 
the effect of whose verse can hardly be seen in selec- 
tions. The true impression of Crabbe would result, 
he says, " from being, as it were, soaked in through 
the longer process by which the man's peculiar genius 
works." 

Two other points probably drew FitzGerald to 
Crabbe. They both of them had a rich store of 
sentiment and a capacity for " falling in love," so to 
speak, with people ; indeed in Crabbe's case this led 
to some inconvenient and undignified philandering in 
his old age ; but the cause was the same ; they both 
felt the same intimate and almost passionate interest 
in humanity which made them minute and tender 
observers of men. 



III.] LATER YEARS 61 

Then too, and in FitzGerald's case this must not be 
neglected — there was the family link, constituted by 
FitzGerald's close friendship with the son and the 
grandson of the poet. FitzGerald started with a 
predisposition to admire the work of those he loved, 
not only for its intrinsic merits, but because it was a 
part of them. His own feeling about the little book 
was as follows : he wrote to Mrs. Kemble : — 

" You can tell me if you will — and I wish you would — 
whether I had better keep the litjile Opus to ourselves, or let 
it take its chance of getting a few readers in public. You 
may tell me this very plaiuly, I am sure ; and I shall be 
quite as well pleased to keep it unpublished. It is only a 
very, very little Job, you see : requiring only a little Taste 
and Tact : and if they have failed me — Voila ! I had some 
pleasure in doing my little work very dexterously, I thought; 
and I did wish to draw a few readers to one of my favourite 
Books which nobody reads. And, now that I look over it, I 
fancy that I have missed my aim — only that my Friends will 
like," etc. 

In the same year, 1879, FitzGerald's elder brother 
died, of a painful disorder, after great suffering. 
Edward could not bring himself to attend the funeral. 
The estates of Boulge and Irwell were sold, the only 
surviving son of John, Gerald, dying a month after his 
father. 

Occasionally FitzGerald slipped up to London ; there 
is a charming vignette at this time : — 

". . . When I was in London, I went to morning Service 
in Westminster Abbey ; and, as I sat in the Poets' Corner 
Transept, I looked down for the stone that covers the remains 
of Charles Dickens, but it may have been covered by the 
worshippers there. I had not been inside that Abbey for 
twenty years, I believe ; and it seemed very grand to me ; 
and the old Organ rolled and swam with the Boys' voices on 
the Top through the fretted vault, as you know. Except 



62 EDWAED FITZGEKALD [chap. 

that, I heard no music, aud saw no Sights, save in the 
Streets." 

FitzGerald's country solitude was cheered by visits 
from Charles Keene, the great black-and-white artist, 
and other friends. Charles Keeue had been a school- 
fellow of CowelPs at Ipswich. He was a shy creature, 
brightening up among friends, abstemious, fond of 
music, fond of old English books ; he liked untidiness 
and tobacco smoke, and was careless about his dress 
— in every way a congenial companion for FitzGerald. 

In December another of the FitzGerald family circle 
died, his sister, Mrs. De Soyres, leaving only Edward 
and Mrs. Wilkinson. Long years before he had told 
Tennyson of her engagement, saying that his sister 
was about to marry " a Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman." 
Tennyson had seized upon the fact that the words 
made a line of blank verse, and aptly illustrated 
Wordsworth's w^eakest manner. He and FitzGerald 
used laughingly to dispute the ownership of the line. 

In 1880 FitzGerald found in an old portfolio a little 
paper on the Black Horse inn and mill of Baldock, 
which he had written twenty-three years before ; and 
this he now published in Temple Bar ; he was a good 
deal at Lowestoft this year with the Cowells, Mr. Aldis 
Wright, and the faithful Posh ; and he visited Crabbe 
(the third) at his Eectory of Merton. FitzGerald was 
restless, melancholy, and dissatisfied ; his health grew 
worse, and the disease of the heart made progress. 
But he was not inactive. He took out his versions 
of the two plays of ffidipus, which he had practically 
completed twenty-four years before, and printed them 
in two parts, issuing only fifty copies of each. 

Carlyle died in 1881, and in the following month 
James Spedding was run over by a cab, and carried 
hopelessly injured to St. George's Hospital. Spedding 



III.] Ly^TER YEARS 63 

died like a Christian and a philosopher, only expressing 
a wish that the cab had done its work :aore thoroughly. 
" I have not known," FitzGerald wrote to Spedding's 
niece, " no, nor heard of, any mortal so prepared to 
step unchanged into the better world we are promised." 

In the summer of 1881 FitzGerald went to Cam- 
bridge to see the Cowells, then living in Scroop Ter- 
race. He went to see Mr. Aldis Wright, and felt at 
home in his book-lined rooms. 

In the winter he was at Woodbridge again. 

"... I suppose that you in Jersey have had no winter yet ; 
for even here thrushes pipe a little, anemones make a pale 
show, and I can sit in my indoor clothing on a Bench without, 
so long as the Sun shines. I can read but little, and count of 
my Boy's coming at Night, to read Sir Walter Scott, or some 
Travel or Biography, that amuses him as well as me. We are 
now beginning the Fortunes of Nigel, which I had not ex- 
pected to care for, and shall possibly weary of before it ends ; 
but the outset is nothing less than delightful to me. I think 
that Miss Austen, George Eliot and Co. have not yet quite 
extinguished him, in his later lights." 

In 1882 he went to London and saw his old friend 
Donne, who lay dying, and the Kembles. " Donne," 
he said tenderly, " ah, there is a man without a fault — 
the least selfish man I ever knew." 

He wrote sadly to Mr. Aldis Wright : — 

"... My dear Donne was given over by the Doctor some 
ten days ago ; but has since rallied — to go through the trial 
again ! " 

FitzGerald always classed Donne and Spedding 
together as two men of great abilities and profound 
minds who, in spite of leading laborious lives, had pro- 
duced results so little commensurate with their powers. 

FitzGerald's thoughts in these last years turned 
much to the pleasant haunts of his youth, and he 



64 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

made a farewell pilgrimage to Alcleburgh. " There is 
no sea like the Alcleburgh sea," he said to Alfred Smith, 
as they paced the beach. " It talks to me." He was 
feeling the approaches of age. 

"... I have not yet quite lost my Cold, and you know 
how one used to hear that so it was with Old Age : and now 
we find it so. Now the Sun shows his honest face I get more 
abroad, and have been sitting out under his blessed rays this 
very day, which People tell me is quite indiscreet. But I do 
not find the breath from Heaven direct nearly so trying as 
through a Keyhole." 

"... I am better off than many — if not most — of my 
contemporaries; and there is not much [worth] living for 
after seventy-four." 

A little honour fell to him this year which pleased 
him. The Spanish Ambassador sent him the Calderon 
Gold Medal in recognition of his translations. 

He got through the winter without any return of 
the bronchial troubles that had of late threatened him 
in the cold weather. But he felt his end approaching. 
" We none of us get beyond seventy-five," he said 
to a friend ; and he often spoke of " smelling the 
ground," as the sailors say of a ship in shoaling 
water. He made his will very carefully, and he packed 
his unpublished books in a tin box, with a letter 
addressed to Mr. Aldis Wright, expecting and indeed 
hoping that his end would be a sudden one. He began 
to disperse his books and pictures, sending Mrs. 
Tennyson Laurence's portrait of Tennyson. He stole 
up to London to see Carlyle's statue and the house in 
Cheyne Row, and fell to weeping. 

But he could still be merry ; a friend records that 
as he sat with FitzGerald in May 1883 at Woodbridge, 
on a bench beside the river, FitzGerald called out to 



III.] LATER YEARS 65 

a small boy wading in the ooze, " Little boy, did you 
never hear tell of the fate of the Master of Eavens- 
wood ? " and then he told the child the story. 

He received, too, a visit from an old friend, Arch- 
deacon Groome, a lover of music, who talked to him 
about the famous singers they had heard in their 
youth, and made FitzGerald laugh very heartily by 
imitating Vaughan's singing. 

On the 13th of June 1883, he set off for Merton 
Rectory, taking with him a book or two, into the 
leaves of which he slipped some bank-notes, as was 
his wont, for current expenses. The day before he 
set off he wrote to his friend Laurence. It was the 
last letter he was ever to write : — 

" My dear Laurence, — It is very kind of you to remem- 
ber one who does so little to remind you of himself. Your 
drawing of Allen always seemed to ine excellent, for which 
reason it was that I thought his Wife should have it, as 
being the Record of her husband in his younger days. So of 
the portrait of Tennyson which I gave his Wife. Not that I 
did not value them myself, but because I did value them, as 
the most agreeable Portraits I knew of the two men ; and, 
for that very reason, presented thsm to those whom they were 
naturally dearer to than even to myself. I have never liked 
any Portrait of Tennyson since he grew a Beard ; Allen, I 
suppose, has kept out of that. 

" If I do not write, it is because I have absolutely nothing 
to tell you that you have not known for the last twenty years. 
Here I live still, reading, and being read to, j)art of my time ; 
walking abroad three or four times a day, or night, in spite of 
wakening a Bronchitis, which has lodged like the household 
' Brownie ' within ; pottering about my Garden (as I have 
just been doing) and snipping off dead Roses like Miss Tos ; 
and now and then a visit to the neighbouring Seaside, and a 
splash to Sea in one of the Boats. I never see a new Picture, 
nor hear a note of Music except when I drum out some old 
Tune in Winter on an Organ, which might almost be carried 
about the Streets with a handle to turn, and a Monkey on the 



66 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. hi. 

top of it. So I go on, living a life far too comfortable as 
compared with that of better, and wiser men : but ever ex- 
pecting a reverse in health such as my seventy-five years are 

subject to. What a tragedy is that of ! So brisk, 

bright, good a little woman, who seemed made to live ! And 
now the Doctors allot her but two years longer at most, and 

her friends think that a year will see the End ! and poor , 

tender, true, and brave ! His letters to me are quite fine in 
telling about it. Mrs. Kemble wrote me word some two or 
three months ago that he was looking very old : no wonder. 
I am told that she keeps up her Spirits the better of the two. 
Ah, Providence might have spared pauvre et triste Humanite 
that Trial, together with a few others which (one would 
think) would have made no difference to its Supremacy. 
' VoiVa ma petite j^i'oteatation resjjectueiise a la Providence,' as 
Madame de Sevigne sa,ys. 

" To-morrow I am going (for my one annual Visit) to 
G. Crabbe's, where I am to meet his Sisters, and talk over 
old Bredfield Vicarage days. Two of my eight Nieces are 
now with me here in my house, for a two months' visit, I 
suppose and hope. And I think this is all I have to tell you 
of. — Yours ever sincerely, E. F. G." 

He travelled by Bury, and went to look at the old 
school. He was met at the station by the Rector and 
driven to the Eectory. He talked cheerfully about 
Bury at tea, and walked in the garden. But the 
journey had tired him, and he went to bed at ten o'clock. 
How his end came to him is not known ; but when a 
servant went to call him in the morning of June 14th, 
he gave no answer, and it was found that he had 
died quietly in the night, as he had desired to die. 

His body was taken to Littlegrange, and he was 
buried beneath the church tower at Boulge, with the 
words on his tomb thatCowell had taught him to love: — 
" It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves." 

Mrs. FitzGerald survived him for fifteen years, and 
died (1898) at a great age at her house at Croydon. 



CHAPTER IV 



FRIENDS 



It may be admitted that FitzGerald's fame partly 
depends upon the accident of his having been the 
chosen friend of several remarkable men. But even 
allowing his close contact with such memorable person- 
alities as Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, and Spedding 
to have been accidental, the qualities which made it 
possible for him to win and retain so warm, so supreme 
a regard from them were far from accidental. To 
those whom he loved, even after long absences, he was 
always the same ; though in the case of Cowell he 
experienced a certain difficulty in taking up the old 
friendship again on the same terms after his friend's 
long absence in India. 

This devotion was not inconsistent in FitzGerald's 
case with an extreme clear-sightedness as to the 
character of his friends. He admired them generously ; 
but he also took severe account of their faults and 
foibles. Nor did he ever attempt to slur over the 
amiable weaknesses he discerned. He did not think a 
friend a poet because, as in the case of Bernard Barton, 
he happened to write verses, or an artist, because, like 
Edwards, he painted pictures. 

Another remarkable trait in FitzGerald's behaviour 
to his friends is that no matter how great or famous 
they became, there was never the least symptom of 
deference or conscious inferiority in FitzGerald's 

G7 



68 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

attitude, though perhaps we may discern faint traces 
of a mild envy. If he avoided, as he sometimes seemed 
to do, tlie society of his more distinguislied friends, 
it was not tliat he felt on terms of inequality, but 
that he was morbidly afraid of being involved in 
their extended social circle. 

The friends to whom FitzGerald was most devotedly 
attached were probably W. K. Browne, Archdeacon 
Allen, Frederic Tennyson, and Mr. Aldis Wright ; and to 
these he displayed the greatest tenderness and fidelity ; 
but it will be worth while to trace a little more in 
detail his relations with the four still more famous 
friends, Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, andSpedding; 
for these friendships exhibit FitzGerald in the clearest 
light, and show how strong his critical jDovver was. 

FitzGerald began by having an overwhelming ad- 
miration for Tennyson both as a poet and a man. He 
gave Mrs. Kemble the following interesting description 
of his early appearance in undergraduate days : — 

" At that time he looked something like Hyperion shorn of 
his Beams in Keats's Poem: with a Pipe in his mouth. 
Afterwards he got a touch, I used to say, of Haydon's 
Lazarus." 

But the early relations between the two are finely 
exemplified in the following letter, which FitzGerald 
wrote to Tennyson in 1835 : — 

" I have heard you sometimes say that you are bound by 
the want of such and such a sum, and I vow to the Lord that 
I could not have a greater pleasure than transferring it to you 
on such occasions ; I should not dare to say such a thing to a 
small man, but you ai-e not sxich a small man assuredly ; and 
even if you do not make use of my offer, you will not be 
offended, but put it to the right account. It is very difficult 
to persuade people in this world that one can part from a 



IV.] FRIENDS 69 

bank-note without a pang. It is one of the most simple 
things I have ever done to talk thus to you, I believe ; but 
here is an end, and be charitable to me." 

FitzGerald saw, probably more clearly than any 
one, the extraordinary originality and genius which 
Tennyson displayed by flashes in his ordinary talk. 
He made a collection of these dicta in a note-book, 
but though the volume was lost, FitzGerald retained 
many small reminiscences in his mind, and several of 
them are given in the Life of the poet. Thus, writing 
to Professor Norton, in 1876, he said : — 

" Dante's face I have not seen these ten years : only his 
Back on my Book Shelf. What Mr. Lowell says of him 
recalled to me what Tennyson said to me some thirty-five or 
forty years ago. We were stopping before a shop in Regent 
Street where were two Figures of Dante and Goethe. I (I 
suppose) said, ' What is there in old Dante's Face that is 
missing in Goethe's?' And Tennyson (whose Profile then 
had certainly a remarkable likeness to Dante's) said : ' The 
Divine.'" 

FitzGerald welcomed the early poems of Tennyson 
with a rapturous enthusiasm, kindled by the sweet 
and generous sympathies of youth, rather than based 
upon critical appreciation. But his judgment con- 
firmed what his heart suggested. He saw, perhaps 
as clearly as they could be seen, the pure beauty, the 
noble originality of Tennyson's first lyrics. 

But the sky gradually clouded over. The two drew 
apart so far as physical propinquity went, and a slow 
change passed over FitzGerald's view of Tennyson's 
powers, and the use he was making of them. His view 
was hardly that the later works were not in themselves 
beautiful, but he had set his heart on Tennyson pro- 
ducing some colossal monumental work of an epical 
kind. He had hoped to see him concentrate all his 



70 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

powers to some such poem, and lie was distressed to 
find him becoming, as he thought, diffuse and senti- 
mentaL The Idylls disappointed him, because he did 
not care for epics of chivalry, and disliked the episodi- 
cal handling of the subject. 

Slowly the disapproval increased, and though per- 
haps FitzGerald was unfair to the later work, yet his 
verdict will not improbably be re-echoed by future 
critics: namely, that on Tennyson's early work lies, so 
to speak, the dew of the morning; and that the great 
vogue he enjoyed, coupled with advancing years, the 
seductive influences of widespread popularity, and 
possibly even more material considerations, did effect a 
certain change in his power of conception though not 
in his technical skill. 

Thus FitzGerald wrote to Frederic Tennyson in 1850, 
that none of the songs inserted between the cantos of 
The Princess had " the old champagne flavour " ; and 
very soon, in a peevish fashion, he lost faith in Tenny- 
son altogether, and began to rail at, or rather moan 
over, each of his successive productions in turn. He 
spoke his mind quite plainly about it to the friends 
of the poet, and even to the poet himself. Thus he 
wrote to Frederic Tennyson in 1850: — 

" You know Alfred himself never writes, nor indeed cares a 
halfjjenuy about one, though he is very well satisfied to see 
one when one falls in his way. You will think I have a 
spite against him for some neglect, when I say this, and say 
besides that I cannot cave for his In Memoriam. Not so, if 
I know myself : I always thought the same of him, and was 
just as well satisfied with it as now. His poem I never did 
greatly affect : nor can I learn to do so : it is full of finest 
things, but it is monotonous, and has that air of being evolved 
by a Poetical Machine of the highest order. So it seems to 
be with him now, at least to me, the Impetus, the Lyrical 
oestrus, is gone. ... It is the cursed inactivity (very pleasant 



IV.] FRIENDS 71 

to me "who am no Hero) of this 19th century which has spoiled 
Alfi-ed, I mean spoiled him for the great work he ought now 
to be entering upon ; the lovely and noble things he has done 
must remain. It is dangerous work this prophesying about 
great Men. . . ." 

As tlie years went on, PitzGerald began to feel 
more and more that the poet was being lost in the 
artist, and that the artist '^ had not the wherewithal 
to work on." He felt with Carlyle that somehow or 
other the great vigour, the splendid fighting qualities of 
Tennyson, had not found expression either in thought 
or life. He thought that the poet was being " suffocated 
by London adulation," and that he was parting with 
originality, freshness, and sincerity of aim. " He has 
lost," he wrote, " that which caused the long roll of 
the Lincolnshire wave to reverberate in Locksley 
Hall." 

Though he could even so make some generous allow- 
ance : — " pure, lofty, and noble as he always is," he 
wrote, near the end of his life, with a flash of the old 
admiration. 

Perhaps his most deliberate judgment on Tennyson 
occurs in a letter to Mrs. Kemble, where he touches 
with a firm hand the weak point in Tennyson's life; 
— the weak point, indeed, in FitzGerald's own life — 
the self-absorption born of seclusion, and the want 
of practical activity telling on a temperament whose 
melancholy demanded a certain healthy objectivity 
never attained. He is speaking of " Posh," and con- 
tinues : — 

"I thought that both Tennyson and Thackeray were 
inferior to him in respect of Thinking of Themselves. When 
Tennyson was telling me of how the Quarterly abused him 
(humorously, too), and desirous of knowing why one did not 
care for his later works, etc., I thought that if he had lived 



72 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

an active Life, as Scott and Shakespeare ; or even ridden, shot, 
drunk, and played the Devil, as Byron, he would have done 
much more, and talked about it much less. ' You know,' said 
Scott to Lockhart, 'that I don't care a Curse about what I 
write,' and one sees he did not. I don't believe it was far 
otherwise with Shakespeare. Even old Wordsworth, wrapped 
up in his Mountain mists, and proud as he was, was above all 
this vain Disquietude : proud, not vain, was he : and that 
a Great Man (as Dante) has some right to be — but not to 
care what the Coteries say. What a Rigmarole ! " 

And yet the personal regard remained undimmed 
and unabated. Year after year FitzGerald kept in 
toiicli with the poet and his family circle by whimsical, 
delicate, loving letters ; and Tennyson, too, when 
asked at the end of his life which of his friends he 
had loved the best, would reply unhesitatingly, " Why, 
old Fitz, to be sure ! " 

FitzGerald's personal acquaintance with Carlyle be- 
gan in 1842 when Thackeray, or, according to another 
account, Samuel Laurence, took him to tea in Carlyle's 
house. Their friendship ripened over the exploration 
of Naseby Field, and in 1846 they were writing to each 
other as "Dear Carlyle" and "Dear FitzGerald." 

The following is a little account of a visit he paid 
Carlyle in 1844 : — 

" I smoked a pipe with Carlyle yesterday. We ascended 
from his dining-room carrying pipes and tobacco up through 
two stories of his house, and got into a little dressing-room 
near the roof : there we sat down : the window was open, and 
looked out on nursery gardens, their almond trees in blossom, 
and beyond, bare walls of houses, and over these, roofs and 
chimneys, and roofs and chimneys, and here and there a 
steeple, and whole London crowned with darkness gathering 
behind like the illimitable resources of a dream. I tried to 
persuade him to leave the accursed den, and he wished — 
but — but — perhaps he didn't wish on the whole." 



IV.] FRIENDS 73 

And to their later relations a toucliing letter of 
Carlyle's, in 1868, bears witness : — 

" Dear FitzGerald, — Thanks for inquiring after me 
again. I am in my usual weak state of bodily health, not 
much worse, I imagine, and not even expecting to be better. 
I study to be solitary, in general ; to be silent, as the state 
tliat suits me best; my thoughts then are infinitely sad 
indeed, but capable too of being solemn, mournfully beauti- 
ful, useful ; and as for ' hapi^iness,' I have of that employment 
moi"e or less befitting the years I have arrived at, and the 
long journey that cannot now be far off. 

" Your letter has really entertained me : I could willingly 
accept twelve of that kind in the year — twelve, I say, or even 
fifty-two, if they could be content with an answer of silent 
thanks and friendly thoughts and remembrances ! But within 
the last three or four years my right hand has become captious, 
taken to shaking as you see, and all writing is a thing I 
require compulsion and close necessity to drive me into ! 
Why not call here when you come to town? I again assure 
you that it would give me pleasure, and be a welcome and 
wholesome solace to me. — With many true wishes and re- 
gards, I am always, Dear F., sincerely yours, 

" T. Carlyle." 

It is obvious that FitzGeralcl's later views of Carlyle, 
and even of his writing, were much modified by their 
friendship. In early days he had hated with a deep 
hatred the torrent of language, the mannerisms, the 
affectations, the " canvas waves " of Carlyle. 

Thus he wrote to Bernard Barton of The French 
Revolution : — 

" This state of head has not been improved by trying to 
get through a new book much in fashion — Carlyle's French 
Revolution, — written in a German style. An Englishman 
writes of French Revolutions in a German style. People say 
the Book is very deep : but it appears to me that the meaning 
seems deep from lying under mystical language. There is no 
repose, nor equable movement in it : all cut up into short 



74 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

sentences half reflective, half narrative ; so that one labours 
through it as vessels do through what is called a short sea — 
small, contrary going waves caused by shallows, and straits, 
and meeting tides, etc. I like to sail before the wind over 
the surface of an even-rolling eloquence like that of Bacon or 
the Opium Eater." 

But as soon as FitzGerald began to know him lie also 
began to realise that Carlyle the writer was the same 
as Carlyle the man, and that what might have been 
called affectation in many writers was merely Carlyle's 
natural mode of expressing his thoughts. Still he 
could not tolerate the turgid, glowing, rugged rhetoric 
that came out like a series of explosions, though he 
maintained that there was " vital good " in all Carlyle 
wrote. 

The thought of the philosopher sitting in his study, 
growling and fulminating about all things in heaven 
and earth, " scolding away at Darwin, the Turks, 
etc.," was always inexpressibly ludicrous to FitzGerald ; 
and while he admired Carlyle's incredible energy 
and patience, with a kind of regretful wonder, seeiug 
qualities displayed that were so unlike his own, he yet 
was offended by the rough indifference to the feelings 
of others — "a little Scotch indelicacy " — into which 
Carlyle was so often betrayed. 

When in 1875, on the occasion of Carlyle's eightieth 
birthday, his admirers presented him with a com- 
memorative gold medal, bearing Carlyle's effigy and an 
inscription, FitzGerald was considerably disconcerted. 
His dislike of anything resembling pose, of public 
recognition, came out very strongly ; he wrote : — ■ 

" And yet I think he might have declined the Honours of 
a Life of ' Heroism.' I have no doubt he would have played • 
a Brave Man's Part if called on ; but, meanwhile, he has only 
sat pretty comfortably at Chelsea, scolding all the world for 



IV.] FRIENDS 75 

not being Heroic, and not always very precise in telling them 
how. He has, however, been so far heroic, as to be always 
independent whether of Wealth, Rank, and Coteries of all 
sorts : nay, apt to fly in the face of some who courted him. 
I suppose he is changed, or subdued, at eighty : but up to 
the last ten years he seemed to me just the same as when I 
first knew him five-and-thirty years ago. What a Fortune he 
might have made by showing himself about as a Lecturer, as 
Thackeray and Dickens did ; I don't mean they did it for 
Vanity : but to make money : and that to spend generously. 
Carlyle did indeed lecture near forty years ago before he was 
a Lion to be shown, and when he had but few Readers. . . . 
He looked very handsome then, with his black hair, fine 
Eyes, and a sort of Crucified Expression." 

Carlyle himself kept a very warm corner in his 
heart for FitzGerald. So much so indeed that that 
sharp censor of all that was dilettante or inactive was 
able actually to suppress all or nearly all contemptuous 
comment on his friend. 

Carlyle wrote of FitzGerald to Norton : — 

" It is possible FitzGerald may have written to you; but 
whether or not I will send you his letter to myself, as a 
slight emblem and memorial of the peaceable, affectionate, 
and ultra modest man, and his innocent^a?- niente life — and 
the connexion (were there nothing more) of Omar, the 
Mahometan Blackguard, and Oliver Cromwell, the English 
Puritan ! — discharging youcomjiletely, at the same time, from 
ever returning me this letter, or taking any notice of it, ex- 
cept a small silent one." 

When the Reminiscences came out after Carlyle's 
death, FitzGerald felt considerable indignation at 
the brutality with which living persons, and near 
relations of the living, were criticised. This indig- 
nation w^as, however, more directed against the editor 
than against the writer; and his admiration of Carlyle's 
own strength and simplicity survived the shock. 



76 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

When the Biography appeared, FitzGerald's feelings 
underwent an entire revulsion. His sense of indigna- 
tion at the harshness displayed in the Reminiscences 
was swallowed up in admiration and love. He saw 
the nobleness of the man, his true tenderness of heart, 
the fiery trials through which he had passed, the faults 
of temperament with which he had so gallantly 
struggled. The book moved him deeply ; he wrote : — 

" Yes, you must read Froude's Carlyle above all things, 
and tell nie if you do not feel as I do about it. . . . 

"Bat how is it that I did not know that Carlyle was so 
good, grand, and even loveable, till I read the Letters which 
Froude now edits? I regret that I did not know what the 
Book tells us while Carlyle was still alive ; that I might have 
loved him as well as admired him. But Carlyle never spoke 
of himself in that way : 1 never heard him advert to his 
Works and his Fame, except one day he happened to mention 
' About the time when IVlen began to talk of me.' " 

It is an interesting friendship because so unequal. 
It shows that respect, and affection, and sincerity are 
the true levellers of all differences. Two men could 
hardly have been selected whose temperaments were 
not only so dissimilar, but to each of whom the faults 
of the other's intellect and character would have been 
naturally so repugnant. The gentle-hearted sceptic 
and the puritan prophet. Yet both had an eye for 
humanity and simplicity ; and upon these qualities 
their mutual regard was based. 

Thackeray was at Trinity with FitzGerald, but his 
junior by two years. At Cambridge they were very 
close comrades. They were often in each other's 
rooms, and amused themselves with music and draw- 
ing; they found infinite relish in criticising and 
caricaturing their friends and acquaintances, in imitat- 
ing the peculiarities of singers, and maintaining the 



IV.] FRIENDS 77 

brisk freemasonry of gifted and liigh-spirited youth. 
Thackeray was ''Will " to FitzGerald. FitzGerald by 
turns Ned, Neddibns, Neddikins, Yedward, old Fitz, 
or " dear vieux " to Thackeray. Thackeray was idle at 
Cambridge. " I find reading a hard, hard matter," he 
wrote to his mother ; and he encouraged FitzGerald to 
find it hard too. But their comradeship did not last 
very long, though they met in town not infrequently, 
and even visited Paris together. There was a radical 
difference between the two men. Thackeray had a 
full-blooded love of life and living, and an inveterate 
sociability of disposition. FitzGerald had far less 
vitality and animal spirits, and found the kind of life 
in which Thackeray revelled a decided strain. Both 
had moods of melancholy ; but in Thackeray it was 
rather the reaction from the excitement of eager 
living, while in FitzGerald it was a melancholy of 
temperament which lay deeper in his nature. We see 
FitzGerald, as the years went on, turning more and 
more to solitude and seclusion, country rambles alone 
or with a single companion, loving the quiet sights 
and sounds of nature, and instinctively avoiding the 
strain of society and talk. Thackeray, on the other 
hand, was made for cities and the stir of vivid and 
vigorous life. FitzGerald wrote of him in 1845 : — 

"In the meanwhile old Thackeray laughs at all this; and 
goes on in his own way; wi'iting hard for half-a-dozen 
Reviews and Newspapers all the morning ; dining, drinking, 
and talking of a night ; managing to preserve a fresh colom- 
and perpetual flow of spirits under a wear-and-tear of think- 
ing and feeding that would have knocked up any other man 
I know two years ago, at least. ..." 

As the years went on, Thackeray's mundane suc- 
cesses made FitzGerald more and more shy of him, 
and possibly even unconsciously a little jealous. Fitz- 



78 EDWAED FITZGERALD [chap. 

Gerald appears to liave beeu almost appalled at 
Thackeray's zest and power of enjoyment; he was 
bewildered at the knowledge of the world and human 
weaknesses which Thackeray showed. And, moreover, 
though Thackeray had a vein of deep and wholesome 
tenderness in his nature, there was also a certain 
cynicism, which to FitzGerald was unpalatable. 
Thackeray's heroes and heroines enjoy the kingdoms 
of the world and the glory of them ; and the quiet, 
domestic tenderness of life, the simple pleasures of the 
family and the home, are rather as gentle interludes 
in the fuller and more eager music of the glittering 
world. It is all there, the softer and serener atmo- 
sphere ; but with Thackeray home-life is rather the 
quiet interval, the haven into which, after the stress 
of the voyage, the rattle of the ropes, the leaping of 
the high seas, men return in weariness or disappoint- 
ment. Thackeray's heroes are like Tennyson's Ulysses 
— the world is set in their hearts, and they drink 
delight of battle wath their peers. 

All this was foreign to FitzGerald ; the current of 
life was for him the quiet, monotonous movement of 
leisure and simple joys. The life of cities he regarded 
rather as a tonic, which should brace his spirit ; and 
should send him back with a keener zest to his garden 
and his study, and the talk of simple persons in the 
country stillness. 

Life in London seemed to FitzGerald to have some- 
how taken off the bloom from the generous and high- 
spirited boy he had known. But what the two felt, imo 
sub pectore, for each other, comes out in a most touching 
letter written by Thackeray to FitzGerald on the eve 
of his departure for a lecturing tour in America in 
1852, in which Thackeray says that if anything were 
to happen to him, "I should like my daughters to 



IV.] FRIENDS 79 

remember that you are the best and oldest friend their 
Father ever had, and that j^ou would act as such : as 
my literary executor and so forth." He continues : — 

" Does not this sound gloomily? Well : who knows what 
Fate is in store : and I feel not at all downcast, but very grave 
and solemn just at the brink of a great voyage . . . the great 
comfort I have in thinking about my dear old boy is that 
recollection of our youth when we loved each other as I now 
do while I write Farewell." 

Yet they gradually drifted apart. Thackeray died 
on 24th December 1863, a worn-out man. *' I have 
taken too many crops out of my brain," he had said, 
not long before. A fortnight later FitzGerald wrote 
to Samuel Laurence the painter : — 

"Frederic Tennyson sent me a Pliotograph of W. M. T., 
old, white, massive, and melancholy, sitting in his Library. 

"I am siu"prized almost to find how much I am thinkiirgof 
him : so little as I had seen him for the last ten years; not 
once for the last five. I had been told — by you, for one — 
that he was spoiled. I am glad, therefore, that I have scarce 
seen him since he was ' old Thackeray.' I keep reading his 
Newcomes of nights, and, as it were, hear him saying so much 
in it ; and it seems to me as if he might be coining up my 
Stairs, and about to come (singing) into my Room, as in old 
Charlotte Street, etc., thirty years ago." 

The thought of his lost friend, in tender retrospect, 
was very often with him ; the very echo of his footstep 
and the sound of his voice dwelt with him. 

And he had, too, moods in which he admired 
Thackeray's work, though he did not feel it really 
congenial to him. " Fielding's seems to me coarse 
work in comparison," he wrote. 

It is clear that Thackeray's own regard for FitzGerald 
never wavered. The difference between them was 
temperamental : and it was inevitable that FitzGerald 



80 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

should become conscious of the dissimilarity, though 
there was no reason why Thackeray should. It may 
be remembered that, in the later days of his writing, 
Thackeray professed himself unable to write in his 
own study ; he found it necessary to go to the Club or 
even to an hotel to stimulate his brain by the sight and 
scent, so to speak, of life. Apart from the movement 
and stir of human beings, he was overmastered by 
depression and dreariness. Such a taste would be not 
only unintelligible but positively repellent to Fitz- 
Gerald. And it was this deep-seated divergence of 
temperament that made companionship impossible ; 
though there is no failure of love or even loyalty to 
record. 

James Speddingwas probably the most revered and 
admired, and perhaps the most deeply, if not the most 
warmly loved of all FitzGerald's friends. From the 
earliest Spedding had a great reputation for mitis 
sapientia. " He was the Pope among us young men," 
said Tennyson, " the wisest man I knew." With more 
levity FitzGerald and Thackeray used to make merry 
over Spedding's high, dome-shaped forehead, prema- 
turely bald. 

" That portrait of Spedding, for instance, which Laurence 
has given me : not swords, nor cannon, nor all the Bulls of 
Bashan butting at it, could, I feel sure, discompose that vener- 
able forehead. No wonder that no hair can grow at such an 
altitude : no wonder his view of Bacon's virtue is so rarefied 
tliat the common consciences of men cannot endure it. 
'i hackeray and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea 
of vSpedding's forehead : we find it somehow or other in all 
things, just peering out of all things : you see it in a mile- 
stone, Thackeray says. He also draws the forehead rising 
with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the lake 
of Geneva. We have great laughing over this. The fore- 



IV.] FRIENDS 81 

head is at present in Pembrokeshire, I believe : or Glamor- 
ganshire : or Monmouthshire : it is hard to say which. It 
has gone to spend its Christmas there." 

Spedding was the son of a Cumberland squire. After 
leaving Cambridge he went to the bar and devoted him- 
self eventually to the editing of Bacon's works ; a task 
which lasted over thirty years. After holding one or 
two temporary appointments, Spedding was offered, 
in 1847, the Permanent Under-Secretary ship for the 
Colonies, on the retirement of Sir James Stephen, who 
wrote of Spedding that he was " gentle, luminous, and 
in his own quiet way energetic." He would not, how- 
ever, desert Bacon. Spedding was a man of wonder- 
fully calm, well-balanced, and thoughtful temperament, 
and was the trusted friend and adviser of many 
families. " He always seemed to regard himself," said 
Sir Leslie Stephen, "from the outside, as a good- 
natured man might regard a friend whose foibles 
amuse him, but who is at bottom not a bad fellow." 
He was averse to recognition ; he refused an honorary 
degree, and, on Charles Kingsley's resignation, the 
Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge, with 
humorous and lucid explanations of his own inadequacy. 
PitzGerald's love and admiration for Spedding never 
varied ; though it is not uncharacteristic that he 
could write of him, after fifty years of friendship, in 
the terms of the following letter, and yet make no 
attempt to see him : — 

" My dear old Spedding, though I have not seen him these 
twenty years and more — and probably should never see him 
again — but he lives — his old Self — in my heart of hearts ; 
and all I hear of him does but embellish the recollection of 
him — if it could be embellished — for he is but the same that 
he was from a Boy — all that is best in Heart and Head — a 
man that would be incredible had one not known hira." 



82 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

A few days after this letter was written, Spedding 
was run over by a cab and carried to St. George's 
Hospital, where, on the 9th of March 1881, he died. 

On the 13th of March Titz Gerald wrote : — 

" It seems ahnost wrong or unreasonable of me to be talking 
thus of myself and my little Doings, when not only Carlyle 
has departed from us, but one, not so illustrious in Genius, 
but certainly not less wise, my dear old Friend of sixty years, 
James Spedding : whose name you will know as connected 
with Lord Bacon. To re-edit his Works, which did not want 
any such re-edition, and to vindicate his Character, which 
could not be cleared, did this Spedding saci'ifice forty years 
which he miglit well have given to accomplish much greater 
things ; Shakespeare, for one. But Spedding had no sort of 
ambition, and lilced to be kept at one long work which he 
knew would not glorify himself. He was the wisest man I 
have known : not the less so for plenty of the Boy in him ; a 
great sense of Humour, a Socrates in Life and in Death, 
which he faced with all Serenity so long as Consciousness 
lasted." 

And again, writing of him a few days later, he 
said : — 

" Laurence had written me some account of his Visit to St. 
George's: all Patience: only somewhat wishful to be at 
home : somewhat weary with lying without Book, or even 
Watch, for company. What a Man ! as in Life so in Death, 
which, as Montaigne says, proves what is at the bottom of the 
Vessel. . . . 

" He did not M^ant to see me ; he wanted nothing, I think : 
but I was always thinking of him, and should have done till 
my own Life's end, I know." 

Thus, in the region of friendship, as in all other 
sides of life, we see how early the glow of youth, of 
companionship, of joy, deserted FitzGerald, and left 
him living in a tender, retrospective dream. Many 
men are content to let their youthful friendships fade 



IV.] FRIENDS 83 

into oblivion, to allow propinquity and circumstance 
to determine their choice of associates, or to con- 
centrate their interests upon a closer family circle. 
But FitzGerald was loyal and faithful to the old ties ; 
and his fidelity prevailed even over the clear-sighted 
microscopic gaze which he brought to bear on char- 
acter and life, and to which so much of his own 
unhappiness was due. 



CHAPTER V 

■WRITINGS 03IAR EUA YTIm 

It will be convenient here briefly to summarise the 
writings of FitzQerald, with the dates of their issue. 

First comes the Selection from the Poems and Letters 
of Bernard Barton, with a Memoir by FitzGerald, 
published in 1849 by Hall, Virtue and Co. 

Next comes the Euphranor, which Avas published by 
Pickering in 1851. Polonius, a collection of aphorisms, 
which has been already described, was published by 
Pickering in 1852. In 1853 came the Six Dramas of 
Calderon, published by Pickering. The second edition 
of Euphranor, much altered, appeared in 1855, published 
by J. W. Parker. In 1856 appeared Saldmdn and Absdl, 
published by Parker, which was reprinted at Ipswich 
in 1871, though FitzGerald seems to have ignored 
the issue. In 1859 came the first edition of Omar 
Khayydm, published by Quaritch. In 1862 this was 
privately reprinted in India, with a few additional 
quatrains and some illustrative matter. In 1865 two 
dramas from Calderon — Tlie Mighty Magician and Sxich 
Stuff as Dreams are made of, printed by Childs, and 
intended for private distribution. In the same year 
1865, the translation of the Agamemnon was privately 
printed. In 1868 appeared the second edition of the 
Omar, published by Quaritch. In 1871, as I have said, 
a few copies of a revised edition of Saldmdn and Absdl 
were printed at Ipswich. In 1872 the third edition 

84 



CHAP, v.] ^YRlTI::iGS—OMAB KHAYYAM 85 

of Omar was published by Quaritch. In 1876 the 
Agamemnon Avas published by Quaritch, who iu 1879 
published the fourth edition of the Omar together with 
the Saldmdn and Absdl. In the same year the first 
part of the Readings in Crabbe was privately printed 
by Billing. In 1880 the first part of the (Edipus, and 
in 1881 the second part, were printed by Billing. 
In 1882 a revised Euphranor was printed by the same 
firm. In 1882 the Beadings in Crabbe was published by 
Quaritch, and in 1883 the second part of the Readings 
in Crabbe was published by Quaritch. 

The above record clearly illustrates the desire in 
FitzGerald's mind to print his works, together with his 
shrinking from publication. None of his publications, 
except the Six Dramas of Calderon, bore his name, and 
this only in order to avoid confusion with another 
almost contemporary translation. He preferred to 
test the merits of a book by distributing a few copies 
among his friends ; and the record shows too, in the 
constant revision and alteration that his work re- 
ceived, the extreme difficulty which he found in satis- 
fying his instinct for perfection. The result is that 
the bibliography of his writings is a matter of great 
complexity. 

It is natural to regret the fact that FitzGerald did not 
more often attempt to speak to the world with his own 
direct, authentic utterance. But a temperament both 
melancholy and fastidious is never in want of reasons 
for holding its peace. Very early in life his impulse 
towards creative and original work died away. Thus 
he wrote to Bernard Barton in 1842 : — 

" As to my doing anything else in that way, I know that I 
could write volume after volume as well as others of the mob 
of gentlemen who write with ease : but I think unless a man 
can do better, he had best not do at all ; I have not the 



86 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

strong inward call, nor cruel-sweet pangs of parturition, that 
prove the birth of anything bigger than a mouse." 

And again to the same : — 

" I am a man of taste, of whom there are hundreds born 
every year : only that less easy circumstances than mine at 
present are compel them to one calling : that calling perhaps 
a mechanical one, which overlies all their other, and naturally 
perhaps more energetic impulses. As to an occasional copy 
of verses, there are few men who have leisure to read, and 
are possessed of any music in their souls, who are not callable 
of versifying on some ten or twelve occasions during their 
natural lives : at a proper conjunction of the stars. There is 
no harm in taking advantage of such occasions." 

The truth is that FitzGerald's mind was deficient in 
the imaginative quality. He had a strong spectator ial 
interest in life, a kind of dark yet tender philosophy, 
which gave him his one great opportunity : but even 
there he had, like Teucer, to shoot his arrows behind 
the shiekl of Ajax. He had, of course, an extra- 
ordinary delicacy of perception ; but on the critical side. 

His strength lay in his power of expressing, with a 
sort of careful artlessness, elusive thoughts, rather 
than in strength or subtlety of invention. Plis timid, 
fastidious imagination shrank from the strain of con- 
structing, originating, creating. The Euphranor, which 
will be considered later in detail, is the only experiment 
that he made in the direction of fiction, and there is no 
dramatic grasp in it, no firm delineation of character ; 
one feels that he is moving puppets to and fro, and 
the voice of the showman is speaking all the time. 
He had, too, a certain feminine irritability, a peevish 
fastidiousness which would have dogged his steps if he 
had embarked upon a larger subject ; he would never 
have been satisfied with his work ; he would have 
fretted over it, and abandoned it in despair. 



v.] WlilTlNGS— OJ/^li? KHAYYAM 87 

He was deficient, too, in the patience requisite for 
carrying work tlirough. '^ To correct is the Bore," he 
wrote to Cowell. Yet the bulky volumes of extracts 
and selections and abridgments, which remain in 
Mr. Aldis Wright's possession, such as the collection 
whimsically named Half-Hours with the Worst Authors, 
testify to a certain laboriousness, an acquisitiveness, a 
species of diligence which cannot be gainsaid. One 
may wonder, too, that so desultory a student contrived 
to translate so much as FitzGerald did ; but his mind 
was in a sense active ; he could not be unoccupied, and 
yet had not the vigour necessary for original work. 
To such a man it is a comfort to have work which 
demands no expenditure of vital force, Avhich may be 
taken up and laid down at will, and where the original 
supplies the literary impulse. 

But what is perhaps at the root of the matter is that 
FitzGerald always subordinated Art to Life. He had 
little of the fierce, imperative, creative impulse. Art 
seemed to him not a thing apart, but an accessory of life; 
and therefore a single touch of nature was to FitzGer- 
ald a higher thing than the highest achievement of art. 

Thus he had a great tenderness for worthless little 
books, if they only revealed some gentle and delicate 
trait of character, some small piece of wistful individ- 
uality. A great conception, a broad and vigorous 
motive, often bewildered and stupefied him. His idea 
of the paradise of art was as of a place where you 
could wander quietly about picking a flower here 
and there, catching a little effect, watching a pretty 
grouping of trees and water, the sunlight on a grassy 
bank or a gable-end. He lived and thought in a series 
of glimpses and vistas, but the plan of the place, its 
avenues and terraces, was unregarded by him. And 
thus there was a want of centrality, of combination. 



88 EDWAED FITZGERALD [chap. 

of breadth, about his mind. Art was to him not an 
impassioned quest, but a leisurely wandering in search 
of charm, of colour, of subtle impressions. Probably 
PitzGerald never truly estimated his own temperament. 
He was perhaps misled by his gentle ecstasies into 
thinking that an effort was all that was needed ; and 
perhaps, too, he liked to fancy that what was in reality 
a deep-seated languor of will, was a philosophical 
unworldliness, an indifference to rewards and crowns. 
He nourished no illusions about his past ; but he had 
hopes of future performance, though no care for fame ; 
and it yfShS only as day after day sank like ripples into 
the pool behind him, that he became aware that the 
necessary effort would probably not be made. 

No doubt too, to a man of FitzGerald's disposition, 
the absolute indifference shown by the world at large 
to his writings deprived him of the last touch of 
stimulus. What was still more disheartening, even 
his friends took comparatively little interest in his 
doings. Dean Merivale said in 1877 that he had 
" never thought FitzGerald was guilty of verse." 

Perhaps a great and incontestable success early in 
life might have made a difference to him ; but even so 
he would have been easily cast down by criticism and 
depreciation. He had not the physical vigour to enjoy 
success, the full-blooded energy that makes a man 
desire to be felt, to create a stir, to wield an influence, 
to be a personage. He would probably have found 
that his success gave him only a temporary elation, 
and that the draught had something heady and 
poisonous about it. He would have taken no pleas- 
ure in unintelligent appreciation, in the numerical 
increase of circulation which shows at all events that 
a man's work is accepted by the deferential readers 
who follow authority humbly. 



v.] WRITINGS — OJ/^i? KHAYYAM 8£ 

It is then not to be wondered at, that with Fitz- 
Gerald's earnest avoidance of publicity, his shrinking 
from criticism, such neglect should have been the 
result. But it served only to increase his natural 
diffidence and to make him despair of ever realising 
the ambitious dreams which he had once nourished in 
the careless days of youth, before he had felt the cold 
shadow of the world, before he had learned that he 
was to die. 

Of FitzGerald's writings, I propose to deal first 
with his translations from the Oriental poets, whom 
he began to read with Cowell, probably in 1853. Jami's 
Saldmdn and Absdl appeared first, being published in 
1856. In the same year he began to read Attar's Bird 
Parliainent, and was working in his leisurely way at 
Omar Khayydm, reading, enjoying and adapting. 

Jami's Saldmdn and Absdl is an allegory over which 
FitzGerald spent much time and care ; it is idle to 
speculate why, when the work is compared with Omar, 
the achievement appears to be so slight. Yet so it is. 
The truth is, I conceive, that FitzGerald put so little 
of himself into the poem, but was content to ride, as it 
were, in Jami's chariot. 

The poem is prefaced by an interesting, though some- 
what vague, letter to Cowell, discussing the difficulties 
of dealing with so diffuse a poet as Jami, and explain- 
ing that in his version he has sacrificed much of the 
Oriental imagery 

But there is a touching autobiographical passage in 
the letter which may be quoted. He writes : — 

'• In studying the Original, you know, one gets contentedly 
carried over barren Ground in a new Land of Language — 
excited by chasing any new Game that will but show Sport ; 
the most worthless to win asking perhaps all the sharper 



90 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Energy to pursue, and so far giving all the more Satisfaction 
when run down. Especially, cheered on as I was by such a 
Huntsman as poor Dog of a Persian Scholar never hunted 
with before ; and moreover — but that was rather in the 
Spanish Sierras — by the Presence of a Lady in the Field, 
silently brightening about us like Aurora's Self, or chiming 
in with musical Encouragement that all we started and ran 
down must be Royal Game. 

" Oh, happy days ! When shall we Three meet again — 
when dip in that returning Tide of Time and Circumstance ! 
In those Meadows far from the World, it seemed, as Salaman's 
Island — before an iron Railway broke the Heart of the 
Happy Valley whose Gossip was the Mill-wheel, and Vis- 
itors the Summer Airs that momentarily ruffled the Sleepy 
Stream that turned it as they chased one another over to lose 
themselves in whispers in the Copse beyond. Or i-eturning 
— I suppose you remember whose Lines they are — 

" ' When Winter Skies were tinged with Crimson still 
Where Thornbush nestles on the quiet hill, 
And the live Amber round the setting Sun, 
Lighting the Labourer home whose Work is done, 
Burn'd like a Golden Angel-ground above 
The solitary Home of Peace and Love.' ^ 

" At such an hour drawing home together for a fireside 
Night of it with iEschylus or Calderon in the Cottage, 
whose walls, modest almost as those of the Poor who 
clustered — and with good reason — round, make to my Eyes 
the Towered Crown of Oxford hanging in the Horizon, and 
with all Honour won, but a dingy Vapour in Comparison. 
And now, s]iould they beckon from the terrible Ganges, and 
this little Book, begun as a happy Record of past, and pledge 
perhaps of f utui'e. Fellowship in Study, darken already with 
the shadow of everlasting Farewell ! " 

There is a short note on the original metre of the 
poem ; and a little biographical sketch of Jami, slight 

1 Written by Mrs. Cowell, and altered (for the better) by 
FitzGerald. The original is given in Cowell's Life, p. 307. 
Thornbusli is tlie name of a farm above Bramford. 



v.] WRITINGS— 03/42? KHATYA3I 91 

enough, as must needs be tlie case with the legend of 
one of Avhom comparatively little is known, but over 
which FitzGerald lingers tenderly, strewing roses by 
the way. 

Jami was born early in the fifteenth century of the 
Christian era ; he was a precocious and learned child ; 
he went to a great school at Samarcand, but was re- 
called to Herat by a dream, and there devoted himself 
to the religious life, joining the mystical Sufi sect, with- 
drawing into prafound solitude, and becoming a silent, 
visionary man, absorbed in contemplation. But he 
could not resist the impulse of poetry. " A thousand 
times," he says, " I have repented of such Employ- 
ment; but I could no more shirk it than one can 
shirk what the Pen of Fate has written on his 
Forehead." "As Poet I have resounded through the 
world ; Heaven filled itself with my Song. . . . The 
Kings of India and Riim greet me by Letter ; the 
Lords of Irak and Tabriz load me with gifts." After 
a pilgrimage to Mecca, with some sharp adventures 
intermingled, he returned to Herat; died at a great 
age, and was buried with much pomp and circum- 
stance. He wrote innumerable volumes of grammar, 
poetry, and theology. Saldmdf- and Ahsdl was the 
last product of his old age, the n ature vintage of his 
powers. 

It is an allegory in which, a''> FitzGerald says, the 
poet " symbolised an esoteric doctrine which he dared 
not — and probably could nojt — more intelligibly re- 
veal." Its obscurity is not diminished by the fact that 
it is broken by many apparently irrelevant episodes, 
several of them of a humorous character. 

FitzGerald translated the main poem into blank verse 
and the episodes into a brisk, unrhymed Trochaic 
metre, with Paroemiac pauses. 



92 EDWAKD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Perhaps the most effective passage occurs in the 
introductory invocation : — 

" And yet, how long, O Jamf, stringing Verse, 
Pearl after pearl, on that old Harp of thine ? 
Year after year attuning some new Song, 
The breath of some old Story ? Life is gone, 
And that last song is not the last ; my Soul 
Is spent — and still a Story to be told ! 
And I, whose back is crooked as the Harp 
I still keep tuning through the Night till Day ! 
That harp untuned by Time — the harper's hand 
Shaking with Age — how shall the harper's hand 
Eepair its cunning, and the sweet old harp 
Be modulated as of old ? Methinks 
'Twere time to break and cast it in the fire ; 
The vain old harp, that breathing from its strings 
No music more to charm the ears of men, 
May, from its scented ashes, as it burns. 
Breathe resignation to the Harper's soul, 
Now that his body looks to dissolution. 



Pain sits with me sitting behind my knees, 
From which I hardly rise unhelpt of hand ; 
I bow down to my root, and like a Child 
Yearn, as is likel^' to my Mother Earth, 
Upon whose boso.'y I shall cease to weep, 
And on my Mother's bosom fall asleep." 

The story is thus — '.the Shah of Yunan prays for a 
son ; and a divinely gi^'ted child, Salaman, of extra- 
ordinary beauty, strengl-h, and wit, is sent him. The 
child is nursed by a yo:''.ng foster-mother Absal. As 
he grows to manhood, Saiaman learns to love her, and 
sinks into idle dalliance. He is rebuked by the Shah 
and by a Sage, and bidden to live more manfully. He 
determines to fly with Absul, sets forth for the desert, 
and reaches a wide sea where he embarks on a maccic 



v.] WRITINGS — 03/^17^ KHAYYAM 93 

skiff, which bears the pair to an isle of Paradise ; there 
for a while they dwell, till, struck by contrition, he 
returns, and, torn between duty and passion, resolves 
to die with Absal. They fling themselves together 
into a pyre, but though Absal perishes, Salaman is 
preserved by magical arts. 

In the second part Salaman slowly climbs out of his 
despair, learns wisdom, and is crowned King. There 
follows a long, mystical interpretation of the parable, 
which is little more than the old thought of the 
Conquest of Self, nursed by Pleasure, wrought out by 
suffering. 

The finest passage is probably the description of the 
great sea : — 

" Six days Salaman on the Camel rode, 
And then the hissing arrows of reproof 
Were fallen far behind ; and on the Seventh 
He halted on the Seashore ; on the shore 
Of a great Sea that reaching like a floor 
Of rolling firmament below the Sky's 
From Kaf to Kaf, to Gau and Mahfi down 
Descended, and its Stars were living eyes. 
The Face of it was as it were a range 
Of moving Mountains ; or a countless host 
Of Camels trooping tumultuously up. 
Host over host, and foaming at the lip. 
Within, innumerable glittering things 
Sharp as cut Jewels, to the sharpest eye 
Scarce visible, hither and thither slipping, 
As silver scissors slice a blue brocade." 

There is a certain Oriental splendour about this; 
but it is loosely put together, and there are obvious 
faults both of metre and language. 

The whole translation, it must be confessed, is a 
languid performance. The figure of FitzGerald seems 

1 The mystical boundaries and bases of the world. 



94 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

to move and pace as it were uneasily, embarrassed and 
encumbered by the rich and pictorial draperies. One 
feels that he was following the original too closely, 
and had not the courage boldly to discard the Eastern 
imagery, as he did in Omar, Avhere he selected enough 
to give his version an Oriental colouring while he 
escaped from the weight of the unfamiliar and over- 
loaded texture. He was aware, indeed, that he had not 
wholly succeeded with Saldmdn ; he wrote to Norton : — 

" Omar remains as he was ; Jiimi (Salaman) is cut down to 
two-thirds of his former proportion, and very much improved, 
I think. It is still in a wrong key : Verse of Miltonic strain, 
unlike the simple Eastern ; I remember trying that at first, 
but could not succeed. So there is little but the Allegory 
itself (not a bad one), and now condensed into a very fair 
Bird's Eye view; quite enough for any Allegory, I think. . . ." 

The Saldmdn and Absdl is indeed interesting only 
in the light of the Omai', as revealing the process 
whereby rich results were attained, though it is hard 
to repress a sense of wonder that the uncertain hand 
which penned the Saldmdn can have Avorked in the 
same material Avith such firm and easy strokes as were 
employed in the Omar. 

The interest, then, is almost purely critical, the 
interest of an early essay in an art in which the author 
afterwards attained so splendid a mastery. 

The Bird Parliament, by Attar, attracted FitzGerald's 
attention about 1856. In 1857 an edition of the text 
was published by Garcin de Tassy, who had previously 
analysed the poem. FitzOerald began to study the 
book carefully, and wrote to Cowell in India that the 
apologues were shaping themselves into verse. In 
1862 he had finished a verse-translation which he 
intended at one time to publish in the Journal of the 
Bengal Asiatic Society; but he became aware that it 



v.] WRITINGS — 0JA4i? KHAYYAM 95 

was too free a version to be given in the pages of a 
scientific publication. The plot is as follows : — 

The birds assemble to choose a king, and recite 
their several claims to sovereignty. The Tajidar 
(Crown-wearer), or Persian Lapwing, acts as a kind 
of Moderator. The Tajidar has travelled the Road 
of faith, and has attained to the knowledge of 
the presence of God; after the birds have finished 
their statements, the Tajidar expounds the mysteries 
of faith and attainment. His words inspire the faithful 
birds with enthusiasm. The Tajidar is crowned King, 
and after a long, mystical discourse on the nature 
of the search for truth, a chosen band sets off on 
Pilgrimage, the more mundane and secular of the 
birds retiring to their ordinary occupations. Some 
thirty, under the guidance of the Tajidar, attain to 
the vision of God. Thus it may be said that the plot 
is somewhat analogous to that of The Holy Grail. 

It is a carefully wrought poem, extending to many 
hundred lines ; but it must be confessed that the 
Oriental flavour is too strong ; the discursiveness, the 
lack of definite design, the excess of ornament, are 
both irritating and unsatisfying. The narrative is 
broken by the intrusion of many little fables and 
allegories ; this device, somewhat resembling the 
inclusion of box within box, lacquered and gilded, is 
highly characteristic of the tangential and desultory 
Oriental mind, but to a Western reader it tends 
merely to confuse the structure of the poem. 

Much has been said and written about FitzGerald's 
Omar Khay>jdin ; it has received from its admirers the 
sort of treatment, the poking and pushing, conceded to 
prize animals at shows ; it has been made the subject 
of microscopical investigation; the alterations made by 



96 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

FitzGerald himself in the various editions have afforded 
a rich field for textual comparison and criticism. Yet 
the origin of the poem can be very simply stated. 
FitzGerald happened to light upon an ancient poet, 
through whose writings, in spite of much tedious 
iteration and dreary moralising, much sensual imagery 
and commonplace Epicureanism, ran a vein of thought 
strangely familiar to his own temperament. Omar 
was a sentimentalist, and a lover of beauty, both 
human and natural ; so was FitzGerald. Omar tended 
to linger over golden memories of the past, and was 
acutely alive to the pathos of sweet things that have an 
ending; and such was FitzGerald. Omar was pene- 
trated with a certain dark philosophy, the philosophy 
of the human spirit at bay, when all refuge has failed; 
and this was the case with FitzGerald. 

The result was that out of the ore which was 
afforded him, FitzGerald, by this time a j)i'actised 
craftsman without a subject, was enabled to chase and 
chisel his delicate stanzas, like little dainty vessels of 
pure gold. He brought to the task a rich and stately 
vocabulary, and a style adapted to solemn and some- 
what rhetorical musings of a philosophical kind. Fitz- 
Gerald's love of slow-moving verse adorned by beautiful 
touches of natural observation and of pathetic present- 
ment stood him in good stead. The result was that a 
man of high literary taste found for once a subject 
precisely adapted to his best faculty ; a subject, the 
strength of which was his own strength, and the 
limitations of which were his own limitations. 

Moreover, the poem was fortunate both in the time 
and manner of its appearance ; there was a wave of 
pessimism astir in the world, the pessimism of an age 
that dares not live without pleasure, in whose mouth 
simplicity is a synonym for dulness, tortured alike by 



v.] WRITINGS— OJf^i? KHAYYAM 97 

its desires and by the satiety of tlieir satisfaction, and 
overshadowed by the inherited conscience which it 
contemns but cannot disregard. 

Further, it was fortunate in the manner of its appear- 
ance. If FitzGerald had presented the world with 
an original poem of dreary scepticism and desperate 
philosophy, he would have found but few hearers. 
But the sad and wasted form of his philosophy came 
slowly forwards, dimly smiling, draped in this rich 
Oriental fabric, and with all the added mystery of 
venerable antiquity. It heightened the charm to 
readers, living in a season of outworn faith and restless 
dissatisfaction, to find that eight hundred years before, 
far across the centuries, in the dim and remote East, 
the same problems had pressed sadly on the mind of 
an ancient and accomplished sage. They did not realise 
to what an extent FitzGerald had concentrated the 
scattered rays into his burning-glass; nor how much of 
the poignant sadness, the rich beauty of the thought, 
had been overlaid upon the barer texture of the original 
writer by the far more sensitive and perceptive mind 
of the translator. It was as though FitzGerald had 
found some strict and solemn melody of a bygone age, 
and enriched it with new and honeyed harmonies, added 
melancholy cadences and sweet interludes of sorrow. 
He always tended, as Cowell wrote to Mr. Aldis 
Wright, " to put in some touch of his own large hand 
. . . beyond the author's outline." 

There is little that need be said, little indeed that 
can be said, about the style which FitzGerald adopted 
for his Omar. It is not due to any special poetical 
tradition; the poem is written in a grave, resonant 
English of a stately kind, often with a certain Latinity 
of phrase, and yet never really avoiding a homely 
directness both of diction and statement. His aim 
a 



98 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

appears to have been to produce melodious, lucid, and 
epigrammatic stanzas, which should as far as possible 
follow the general lines of the original thought ; but 
at the same time he did not hesitate to discard and 
suppress anything that interfered with his own concep- 
tion of structure ; no doubt the exigencies of rhyme to 
a certain extent influenced the line of his thought, be- 
cause the triple rhyme which he employed is bound to 
impose fetters on the fancy ; but he seems to have given 
no hint as to how he worked ; the wonder rather is 
that anything which is of the nature of a paraphrase 
should succeed in achieving so profound an originality. 

I do not propose, in the following pages, to treat the 
poem from the Orientalist point of view ; it is a deeply 
interesting task, but demands a fulness and minute- 
ness of treatment which puts it quite outside the scope 
of this biography ; it has, moreover, been exhaustively 
done ; and after all, it is the expression and spirit 
of the poem in English, and not its fidelity to or 
divergence from its Oriental original, which gives Fitz- 
Gerald his position in the world of letters. 

A careful study of FitzGerald's letters to Cowell in 
1857, while the Omar was in process of construction, 
has revealed to me both how desultory his method 
was, and also how difficult he found the elucidation of 
the meaning. These letters have never been published 
— indeed they are too technical for publication — but 
have been shown me by Mr. Aldis Wright. FitzGerald 
seems to be constantly uncertain whether he had 
arrived at the true meaning of a passage : '' I am not 
always quite certain of always getting the right sow 
by the ear," he writes at the conclusion of a long 
string of questions. The letters are written more 
like diaries ; and he added to his queries day by day, 
as he made progress with the work. 



v.] WRYirnGS — OMAB KHAYYA3I 99 

The story of FitzGerald's acquaintauce with the 
original book is interesting enough. His friend 
Cowell, who introduced him to the study of Oriental 
poetry, had found in the Bodleian, in the Ouseley 
collection, a rare manuscript, written on yellow paper 
"with purple-black ink profusely powdered with gold." 
Before leaving England for India, he made a transcript 
of this for FitzGerald, who carried it about with him, 
brooded over it, and worked slowly and leisurely at 
the task of adaptation. 

Thus he wrote to Cowell : — 

'* When in Bedfordshire I put away almost all Books except 
Omar Khayyam ! which I could not help looking over in a 
Paddock covered with Buttercups and brushed by a delicious 
Breeze, while a dainty racing Filly of W. Browne's came 
startling up to wonderand snuff about me. 'Tempus est quo 
Orientis Aura mundus renovatur, Quo de fonte pluviali 
dulcis Imber reseratur; Musi-manus undecumque ramos 
insuper splendescit ; Jesu-spiritusque Salutaris terram per- 
vagatur.' ^ Wliicli is to be read as Monkish Latin, like 'Dies 
Irae,' etc., retaining the Italian value of the Vowels, not the 
Classical. You will thiuk me a perfectly Aristophanic Old 
Man when I tell you how many of Omar I could not help 
running into such bad Latin. I should not confide such 
follies but to you who won't think them so, and who will be 
pleased at least with my still harping on our old Studies. 
You would be sorry, too, to think that Omar breathes a sort 
of Consolation to me. Poor Fellow, I think of him, and 
Oliver Basselin, and Anacreon ; lighter Shadows among the 
Shades, perhaps, over which Lucretius presides so grimly." 

In 1857 Cowell sent PitzGerald a further instal- 
ment of Omar literature, namely, a copy of a Calcutta 
manuscript, and a rare volume, which had been edited 
from that manuscript, and printed in 1836. 

lA rendering, somewhat loose, of the stanza " Now the New 
Year," etc. 



/ 



100 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

The writer of this book was one Omar Khayyam, 
who was living about the time of the Norman Con- 
quest. He died probably in 1123. The legend goes 
that he and two fellow-pupils when boys at school 
took a vow that if any of them rose to eminence they 
would share their good fortune with the others. One 
of them became Vizier to the Sultan Alp-Arslan, 
the son of the Tartar, Toghrul Beg, founder of the 
Seljukian Dynasty, which finally roused Europe into 
the Crusades. The Vizier seeking out, or being sought 
out by, his old friends, gave to one, with a truly Ori- 
ental instinct for what would now be called jobbery, 
a place under Government, and to Omar, who was a 
man of scholarly tastes, a mathematician and an 
astronomer, a large pension. Omar was not a mere 
dilettante. He composed mathematical, metaphysical, 
and scientific treatises. He was one of a Board who 
reformed the Calendar, a fact which he mentions in 
his poems. Omar appears to have been a man of self- 
contained and unsociable temperament, disinclined to 
labour, and given, at all events in later life, to gross 
self-indulgence. The recorded incidents of his life are 
but few, and much that is legendary is undoubtedly 
intertwined with them ; but there is one which is so 
entirely in the spirit of FitzGerald that it must be 
repeated. Walking in a garden with a favourite pupil, 
he said one day, " My tomb shall be in a spot where 
the North wind may scatter roses over it." Many 
years after, when the young man visited the tomb of 
Omar at Nishapur, he found that the rose-trees of a 
neighbouring garden stretched their boughs over the 
wall, and strewed the tomb with "wreck of white 
and red." 

The Bodleian MS. of the Eubaiy^t or Quatrains, 
contains 158 stanzas, though many more are attributed 



v.] WRITINGS — 03f.4JB KHAYYAM 101 

to him. Tliey are not continuous as a rule, tliough 
in some cases an episode runs through a number of 
them. They are rather to be called epigrams, each 
dealing, like a compressed sonnet, with some single 
thought — with love and wine, beauty and charm, life 
and death, and what lies beyond. But FitzGerald by 
selection and arrangement made a certain progression 
or series out of them, tracing in vague outline a soul's 
history. 

FitzGerald wrote of the Eubaiyat that they " are 
independent stanzas, consisting each of four lines of 
equal, though varied, prosody ; sometimes all rhyming, 
but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank. 
Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penulti- 
mate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls 
over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental 
Verse, the Eubaiyat follow one another according to 
Alphabetic Ehyme — a strange succession of Grave 
and Gay." 

It seems that about half of FitzGerald's stanzas are 
adaptations of single quatrains ; about half are adapted 
out of two or more quatrains ; four show traces of 
thoughts taken from other poets. Attar and Hafiz; 
two are from quatrains of doubtful authority ; and 
three appear to have no original model ; there are a few 
others which similarly appear to be purely the work of 
FitzGerald; but the fact that he discarded them in 
later editions tends to prove that he was anxious to 
preserve the idea of translation. FitzGerald's principle 
of interpolating lines from other stanzas is illustrated 
by what he wrote to Cowell : — 

"I think you might string together the stray good Lines 
from some of the otherwise worthless Odes — empty Bottles ! 
— in a very good fashion which I will tell you about when 
we meet." 



102 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

One other point deserves to be mentioned. Fitz- 
Gerald was forever fretting over the quatrains and 
retouching them ; no less than four editions appeared 
in his lifetime, containing many variations ; and it is 
clear that the more he altered, the more he tended to 
diverge from the original thought. We may take two 
or three typical instances of the process of alteration 
which took place in the various editions of the poem. 

Stanza i. originally stood : — 

"Awake ! for Morning in the Bowl of Night 
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight; 

And lo ! the Hunter of the East has caught 
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light." 

In the second edition this was altered to : — 

" "Wake ! for the Sun behind yon Eastern height 
Has chased the Session of the Stars from Night : 
And, to the field of Heav'n ascending, strikes 
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light." 

In the third edition (first draft) the first couplet of 
the quatrain ran : — 

" Wake ! for the Sun before him into Night 
A Signal flung that put the Stars to flight " : 

In the fourth edition we read : — 

" Wake ! for the Sun who scatter' d into flight 
The Stars before him from the Field of Night, 

Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes 
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light." 

The original quatrain, literally translated by Mr. 
Heron-Allen, runs : — 

" The Sun casts the noose of morning upon the roofs ; 
Kai Khosru ^ of the day, he throws a stone into the Bowl : 

1 This expression, which is merely the name of an ancient 
Persian king, Chosroes i., is ijractically equivalent to "sover- 
eign Lord and Master." 



v.] WRITINGS — OJAliZ KHAYYAM 103 

Drink wine ! for the Herald of the Dawn, rising up 
Hurls into the days the cry of ' Drink ye ! ' " 

It will be seen by comparing these versions liow the 
stanza travelled gradually further and further away 
from the imagery of the original ; it may be questioned 
whether the first version is not the most beautiful ; 
and it is certainly an imperfection in the latest version 
that the rhyme Night is repeated early in the third 
line, while the assonance of the vowel-sound of 
" strikes " hardly provides a strong enough contrast, 
considering that the relief given to the ear by the 
unrhymed ending of the third line is thus partially 
sacrificed. 

Stanza x. of the first edition originally ran : — 

" With me along some strip of Herbage strown 
That just divides the desert from the sown 
Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known 
And pity Sultan Mahmiid on his throne." 

An awkward and monotonous stanza. 

In the second and later editions the quatrain 
runs : — 

" With me along the strip of Herbage strown 
That just divides the desert from the sown, 

Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot, 
And Peace to Mahmiid on his golden Throne ! " 

This stanza appears to have no original in the 
Persian, but to have been evolved out of FitzGerald's 
own mind, except that Omar sometimes speaks of the 
edge of the tilled country, " the green bank of a field " 
on which he loved to rest. 

But the alterations are subtle and delicate; the 
change from " some " to " the " lightens the weight of 
the first line ; the removal of the rhyme at the end of 
the third line gives relief ; and few will doubt that the 



104 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

wish that the Sultan may enjoy peace is more in 
keeping with the contented mood than to think of him 
with pity. He is taken in, so to speak, into the inner 
circle of sunshine which for an hour may lie upon the 
sorrowing earth. 

In the original edition, stanza xxxiii. ran : — 

" Then to the rolling Heav'n itself I cried, 
Asking ' What Lamp had Destiny to guide 

Her little Children, stumbling in the Dark ? ' 
And — ' A blind Understanding 1 ' Heav'n replied." 

In the second edition, this stanza is swept away, and 
the noble lines are substituted : — 

" Earth could not answer, nor the Seas that mourn 
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn ; 

Nor Heaven, with those eternal signs reveal'd 
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn." 

In the third edition the third line becomes : — 

" Nor rolling Heaven, with all his signs reveal'd"; 

which is finally retained.^ 

There appears to be no original at all which sug- 
gested the first version ; and though the third line, 
" Her little Children, stumbling in the Dark," has a 
pathos of simplicity, the quatrain is not wholly satis- 
factory, and the fourth line is unmetrical. But the 
sonorous stanza as it finally appears, based upon so 
slender a hint, is not only noble in itself, but is pene- 
trated by a true Oriental symbolism. 

Again, in the original edition there stood a stanza 
(No. xlv.) which seems to have had no parallel in the 
text : — 

1 The original of this stanza is not to be found in Omar at all, 
but in the poems of Attar. 



v.] WRITINGS — 03/^i2 KHAYYA3I 105 

" But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with nie 
The Quarrel of the Universe let be ; 

And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht 
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee." 

It may be questioned why tliis stanza has disap- 
peared ; possibly it was because there was no original 
quatrain corresponding to it ; but I would incline to 
think that FitzGerald felt that the suggestion of 
mockery was a false note, and that mystery and 
wonder, and the pathos of short-lived beauty and 
happiness were rather the essence of his poem. 

We may now consider in detail what are unquestion- 
ably the noblest stanzas of the poem. 

In the first edition stanzas Ivii. and Iviii. ran as 
follows : — 

" Oh Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin 
Beset the road I was to wander in, 

Thou wilt not with Predestination round 
Enmesh me, and impute my fall to Sin. 

Oh Thovi, who Man of baser Earth didst make, 
And who with Eden didst devise the Snake : 
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness give and take ! " 

In the second edition three new stanzas were pre- 
fixed to the two above quoted : — 

" What ! out of senseless Nothing to provoke 
A conscious Something to resent the yoke 

Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain 
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke ! 

What ! from his helpless Creature be repaid 
Pure Gold for what he lent us dross-allay'd — 

Sue for a Debt we never did contract 
And cannot answer — oh the sorry trade 1 



106 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Nay, but, for terror of his wrathful Face, 
I swear I will not call Injustice Grace ; 

Not one Good Fellow of the Tavern but 
Would kick so poor a Coward from the place." 

At the same time some alterations were made in the 
two stanzas of the first version j '' Predestination " 
became " Predestin'd Evil." 

The following line became : — 

" Enmesh, and then impute my fall to Sin." 

In stanza Iviii., " who with Eden didst " became " and 
ev'n with Paradise " ; and the second couplet was 
altered, decidedly for the worse, to : — 

" For all the Sin the Face of wretched Man 
Is black with — Man's Forgiveness give, and take ! " 

But in the third edition the original form of the 
couplet was replaced and retained. At the same time 
the quatrain, " Nay, but, for terror," etc., was elimin- 
ated by a very true instinct. The image of the 
Coward being kicked from the tavern is altogether 
below the dignity of the vein. 
It seems that the startling line — 

" And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake" — 

is based again upon an apologue of Attar's, and does 
not occur in Omar. 

Professor Cowell says that the majestic line — 

" Man's Forgiveness give, and take " — 

is a simple misapprehension, arising from the fact 
that FitzGerald thought a contrast was intended in 
the original line — 

" Thou who grantest repentance and acceptest excuses " — 

which was not really intended by the writer. " I wrote 
to him about it when I was in Calcutta," he added, " but 



v.] WRITINGS — OJAii? KHAYYAM 107 

he never cared to alter it." But it is even more pro- 
bable that FitzGerald had in mind a quatrain which he 
translates in an unpublished letter, " God, forgive 
when I repent, and I will forgive when Thou repentest." 
Perhaps the finest of all the transformations in the 
poem is to be found in the two stanzas which sum 
up the stern and dark philosophy that man is the 
measure of all things : — 

" I sent my soul through the Invisible, 
Some letter of that After-life to spell : 

And by-and-by my soul returned to me, 
And answered, ' I myself am Heav'n and Hell: 

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfiU'd Desire, 
And Hell the shadow from a Soul on fire, 

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, 
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.' " 

"Already," says Omar, "on the day of Creation, 
beyond the heavens, my soul 

" Searched for the Tablet and Pen,i for heaven and hell ; 
At last the Teacher said to me with His enlightened 

judgment. 
Tablet and Pen, and heaven and hell, are within thyself. 

The heavenly vault is a girdle (cast) from my weary 

body. 
Jihun (Oxus) is a watercourse worn by my filtered tears, 
Hell is a spark from my useless worries. 
Paradise is a moment of time when I am tranquil." ^ 

And perhaps the line of Attar, " Heaven and hell are 
reflections, the one of Thy goodness and the other of 
Thy wrath," lends a sidelight to the stanza. 

What is notable in FitzGerald's version is that he 
has caught the central thought, and both simplified 
and amplified it. He has discarded several beautiful 

1 " Tablet and Pen " are the Divine decrees of fate. 

2 Translated by Mr. E. Heron-Allen, 



108 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Oriental touches, such as tliat in the first stanza of 
Omar, that the quest has been from all time ; and in 
the second, that even the rivers of earth take their 
part in the sad fellowship. But here in FitzGerald 
the vesture of the soul is torn aside, and the spirit, 
at once timorous and indomitable, is revealed in its 
utter nakedness ; and the terrifying thought added 
that, so far as knowledge can go, the very perception 
of the deepest things of the world can only be the 
unconfirmed inference of the single soul. 

The story of the publication and reception of the 
book are too curious to be omitted. FitzGerald sent 
the manuscript to Frasefs Magazine in 1858. Almost 
exactly a year later, in 1859, as the poem did not 
appear, he demanded its return, and published it in 
a small quarto in a brown wrapper, the price five 
shillings. Two hundred and fifty copies were printed. 
He sent a few to his friends, and the rest he gave to 
Quaritch. The history of their " discovery " is as 
follows. 

Mr. Swinburne says : — 

" Two friends of Rossetti's — IMr. Whitley Stokes and ]Mr. 
Ormsby — told him (he told me) of this wonderful little 
pamphlet for sale on a stall in St. Martin's Lane, to which 
Mr. Quaritch, finding that the British public unanimously 
declined to give a shilling for it, had relegated it to be 
disposed of for a penny. Having read it, Rossetti and I 
invested upwards of sixpence apiece — or possibly threepence 
— I would not wish to exaggerate our extravagance — in copies 
at that not exorbitant price. Next day we thought we might 
get some more for presents among our friends, but the man 
at the stall asked twopence ! Rossetti expostulated with him 
in terms of such humorously indignant remonstrance as none 
but he could ever have commanded. We took a few, and 
left him. In a week or two, if I am not much mistaken, the 
remaining copies were sold at a guinea; I have since — as I 



v.] WRITINGS — OJAli? KHAYYAM 109 

dare say yoii have — seen copies offered for still more absurd 
prices. I kept my pennyworth (the tidiest copy of the lot), 
and have it still." 

FitzGerakl's own account of the motives which 
induced him to publish the book is as follows. He 
wrote to Cowell : — 

" I sent you poor old Omar, who has his kind of Consola- 
tion for all these Things. I doubt you will regret you ever 
introduced him to me. And yet you would have me print 
the original, with many worse things than I have translated. 
The Bird Epic might be finished at once : but cui bono? No 
one cares for such things ; and there are doubtless so many 
better things to care about. I hardly know why I print any 
of these things, which nobody buys ; and I scarce now see 
the few I give them to. But when one has done one's best, 
and is sure that that best is better than so many will take 
pains to do, though far from the best that might be done, one 
likes to make an end of the matter by Print. I suppose very 
few People have ever taken such Pains in Translation as I 
have ; though certaiidy not to be literal. But at all Cost, a 
Thing must live : with a transfusion of one's own worse Life 
if one can't retain the Original's better. Better a live Spar- 
row than a stuffed Eagle. I shall be very well pleased tasee 
the new MS. of Omar. I shall one day (if I live) print the 
Birds, and a strange experiment on old Calderon's two great 
Plays ; and then shut uj) Shop in the Poetic Line." 

Again, almost at the end of his life, he w^rote a long 
letter on the whole subject, which is interesting : — 

" Li Omar's case it was different : he sang, in an acceptable 
way it seems, of what all men feel in their hearts, but had not 
had exprest in verse before : Jami tells of what everybody 
knows, under cover of a not very skilful Allegory. I have 
undoubtedly improved the whole by boiling it down to about 
a Quarter of its original size ; and there are many pretty 
things in it, though the blank Verse is too Miltonic for 
Oriental style. 



110 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

''All this considered, why did I ever meddle with it? 
Why, it was the first Persian Poem I read, with my friend 
Edward Cowell, near on forty years ago ; and I was so well 
pleased with it then (and now think it almost the best of the 
Persian Poems I have read or heard about) that I published 
my Version of it in 185G (I think) with Parker of the Strand. 
When Parker disajipeared, my unsold Copies, many more than 
of the sold, were returned to me, some of which, if not all, I 
gave to little Quaritch, who, I believe, trumpeted them off to 
some little profit ; and I thought no more of them. 

" But some six or seven years ago that Sheikh of mine, 
Edward Cowell, who liked the Version better than any one 
else, wished it to be reprinted. So I took it in hand, boiled 
it down to three-fourths of what it originally was, and (as you 
see) clapped it on the back of Omar, where I still bslieved it 
would hang somewhat of a dead weight ; but that was 
Quaritch's look-out, not mine. I have never heard of any 
notice taken of it, but just now from you ; and I believe that, 
say what you would, people would rather have the old Sinner 
alone. Therefore it is that I write all this to you. I doubt 
not that any of your Editors would accept an Article from you 
on the Subject, but I believe also they would much prefer one 
on many another Subject ; and so, probably, with the Public 
whom you write for. 

" Thus Uberavi animam nieam for your behoof, as I am 
rightly bound to do in return for your Goodwill to me." 

In a rather more humorous vein, he had written 
twenty years before to W. H. Thompson : — 

" As to my own Peccadilloes in Verse, which never pretend 
to be original, this is the story of Rubaiyd,t. I had trans- 
lated them partly for Cowell ; young Parker asked me some 
years ago for something for Fraser, and I gave him the less 
wicked of these to use as he chose. He kept them for two 
years without using ; and as I saw he didn't want them, I 
printed some copies with Quaritch ; and keeping some for 
myself, gave him the rest. Cowell, to whom I sent a copy, 
w as naturally alarmed at it, he being a very religious Man : 



v.] WRITINGS — 0J/.4i? KHAYYAM 111 

nor have I given any other Copy but to George Borrow . . . 
and to old Donne. . . ." 

The fame of tlie book was at first secret, and con- 
fined (Tweroicrtv. Not until nine years had passed was 
a second edition published. Tlie first edition contained 
only seventy-five quatrains, tlie second one hundred 
and ten, the third and fourth, which were the only 
later ones published in the author's lifetime, one hun- 
dred and one. Since then it has gone through many 
editions both in England and America. It is one of 
the rare cases of a work of supreme merit escaping 
notice at first ; but a proof of its originality is the fact 
that the metre appears to be consecrated by right to 
FitzGerald : it is like the In Memoriam stanza ; it seems 
impossible to use either of these metres without appear- 
ing to imitate the original ; it would seem as if the 
metre could only be used in a particular way, and with 
a particular style. Yet the Omar has been extensively 

imitated. 

" All can raise the flower now, 
For all have got the seed." 

What PitzGerald saw in Omar was rather his differ- 
ence from the other Oriental poets with whom he was 
himself acquainted, than his likeness to them. While 
most Eastern poetry tends to lose itself in vague im- 
agery, more or less relevant to the matter in hand, 
Omar, he thought, had a certain concentration of 
thought, a definite conception which he endeavoured to 
indicate. On this point FitzGerald wrote to Cowell : — 

" I shall look directly for the passages iu Omar and Hafiz 
which you refer to, and clear up, though I scarce ever see the 
Persian Character now. I sujipose you would think it a dan- 
gerous thing to edit Omar; else, who so proper? Nay, are 
you not the only Man to do it? And he certainly is worth 
good re-editing. I thought him from the first the most 



112 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

remarkable of the Persian Poets ; and you keep finding out in 
him Evidences of logical Fancy which I had not dreamed of. 
I dare say these logical Riddles are not his best ; but they are 
yet evidences of a Strength of mind which our Persian Friends 
rarely exhibit, I think. I always said about Cowley, Donne, 
etc., whom Johnson calls the metaphysical Poets, that their 
very Quibbles of Fancy showed a power of Logic which could 
follow Fancy through such remote Analogies. This is the case 
with Calderon's Conceits also. I doubt I have given but a 
very one-sided version of Omar ; but what I do only comes 
up as a Bubble to the Surface, and breaks ; whereas you, with 
exact Scholarship, might make a lasting impression of such 
an Author." 

Much has been written about the symbolism of 
Omar. Literary persons, more careful than himself 
of the old poet's delicacy, have tried to prove that 
the imagery of the poem, like that of the Soug of 
Solomon, is of a spiritual and symbolic character. In 
one sense, indeed, all art has a symbolical side ; a 
poem and a picture are nothing if they are not typical, 
if they are not, so to speak, a blank cheque upon the 
emotions, which those that come after may fill up 
according to their desires and their emotional capacity. 
But just as the veni sponsa de libano, ven-i, coeo- 
NABERis, though mystically applied by the high-minded 
to the invitation of Christ to his Church, was based 
upon a far more passionate, if less exalted dream ; so 
it is impossible to believe that when Omar wrote of the 
joys of the cup and the scented tresses of the cypress- 
slender minister of wine, he was speaking in allegories 
of remote visions and spiritual ecstasies. Perhaps he 
did not write his momentary experiences, perhaps his 
dreams were emotionally recollected, looking back in 
his wistful age upon ''youth and strength and this 
delightful world." But there is no doubt that Omar 
must have drunk his fill of bodily delights ; he speaks 



v.] WRITINGS — 0J/4i? KHAYYA3I 113 

of these things in no veiled allegories, but even, in 
stanzas which FitzGerald shunned, in terms of unmis- 
takable grossness. No one could have written as 
Omar who had not felt the flush of the juice of the 
vine stir and excite the languid thought, as the return- 
ing tide sets afloat the fringes of the seaweed. No 
one could have written as Omar did of love who had 
not thrilled spellbound at the sight of some beloved 
face touching into life those hungering, incommunicable 
dreams. The master had suffered himself, though he 
pursued his lonely way past those sweet visions, out 
from the garden with its rose-twined shelters and 
bubbling fountains into the sand-ridged desert that 
lies in its hot desolation all about the sheltered plea- 
saunce. Like the author of Ecclesiastes, who had seen 
" the emptiness and horror of the dark " that lay so 
close to the door of joy, Omar was full of desolation 
at the bitter mystery. But unlike the author of Ecclesi- 
astes, unlike the Stoic and the Christian moralist, 
he had not the heart to preach detachment. He could 
not adopt the view that because these delights are 
transitory, therefore they must be resolutely avoided. 
Rather he clung to them, in the spirit of the later 

poet : — 

"But oh, the very reason why 
I clasp them, is because they die." 

That these things should be so sweet and yet so brief 
was to Omar, as to FitzGerald, the heart of the mys- 
tery ; not a thought to be banished or to be replaced 
by some far-off hope, but a thought to be dealt with, 
to be wreathed with flowers, and to be made musical, 
if that might be. 

" Did I not once," wrote the author of the above 
pathetic lines, as he sat beside a summer sea, breaking 
in a golden-sanded bay, " did I not once — surely I did 
I 



114 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

— enjoy lil^e a lover the first sight of a sunny bay ? 
and now I cannot think of it without heartache." And 
again, after "a day of sad and kindly partings/' he 
wrote, " What a world it is for sorrow. And how dull 
it would be if there were no sorrow." That is the 
mood of Omar, and that, chastened and refined by 
a sweeter and more generous nature, is the mood of 
FitzGerald. 

Cowell, writing of Omar in the Calcutta Revieio, 
said : — 

" His tetrastichs are filled with bitter satires of the sensu- 
ality and hypocrisy of the pretenders to sanctity, but he did 
not stop there. He could see with a clear eye the evil and 
folly of the charlatans and empirics ; but he was blind when 
he turned from these, to deny the existence of the soul's 
disease, or, at any rate, of the possibility of a cure. Here, 
like Lucretius, he cut himself loose from facts ; and in both 
alike we trace the unsatisfied instincts, — the dim conviction 
that their wisdom is folly, — which i-eflect themselves in darker 
colours in the misanthropy and despair, which cloud their 
visions of life." 

But FitzGerald felt that Cowell could not quite put 
himself in line with the thought of the poem : — 

" You see all his beauty," he wrote, " but you don't feel 
loitli him in some respects as I do." 

As to the motif of the poem, FitzGerald himself sums 
up in a sad and tender epigram, as far as so evasive 
a thing can be summarised, the underlying thought. 
In 1877, sending the book to his friend Laurence, 
he wrote : " I know you will thank me (for the book), 
and I think you will feel a sort of triste Plaisir in it, 
as others besides myself have felt. It is a desperate 
sort of thing, urfortunately at the bottom of all thinking 
men's minds; but made Music of J' 

To translate that exqxiisite sentence into more 



v.] WRITINGS — OJ/.'l/^ KHAYYA3f 115 

scientific and harsher terminology, the poem is pro- 
bably the most beautiful and stately presentation of 
Agnosticism ever made, with its resultant Epicurean- 
ism. Omar does not go to the wine-jar only that he 
may forget, but that he may also remember. He feeds 
on honey-dew and drinks the milk of paradise that 
he may banish for a little the terror of the unknown, 
the bewildered mystery of life, the pain, the shame, 
the fear, and the dark shadow that nearer or further 
lies across the road ; thus much to forget ; and then 
he is, perchance, enabled to remember the sweet days, 
the spring and the budding rose; to remember that 
though the beginning and the end are dark, yet that 
the God of Pain and Death is also the maker of the 
fair world, the gracious charm of voice and hand and 
eye, the woven tapestry of tree and meadow-grass, the 
sunset burning red behind the dark tree-trunks of 
the grove, the voice of music, the song of the bird, the 
whisper of leaves, the murmur of the hidden stream 
— of all the sights and sounds that fill the heart full 
and leave it yearning, unsatisfied with the pain that is 
itself a joy. 

And, then, in such a mood the shadow of loss, the 
memory of sweet things that have an end, the sleep 
of death, tremble into music too; and are like the 
deep, slow pedal-notes above which the lighter descant 
wings its way, as a bird that flies dipping its feet in 
the slow-stirring wave. 

All is vanity ; that is the low cry of the tired heart 
when the buoyant strength of youth dies away, and 
when the brave shows of the glittering world, the 
harsh inspiriting music of affairs, the ambition to 
speak and strive, to sway hearts and minds or destinies, 
fade into the darkness of the end. Against the assaults 
of this nameless fear men hold out what shields they 



IIG EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

can ; the shield of honour, the shield of labour, and, 
best of all, the shield of faith. But there are some 
who have found no armour to help them, and who can 
but sink to the ground, covering their face beneath 
the open eye of heaven, and say with FitzGerald, " It 
is He that hath made us," resigning the mystery into 
the hands of the power that formed us and bade us be. 
For behind the loud and confident voice of work and 
politics and creeds there must still lurk the thought 
that whatever aims we propose to ourselves, though 
they be hallowed with centuries of endeavour and con- 
secration, we cannot know what awaits us or what we 
shall be. AVe strive to believe in Justice and Mercy, 
in love and purity ; and nature, which is still the work 
of God, gives us the lie a hundred times over ; till the 
shrinking soul asks itself, " Am I indeed trying to be 
better, purer, more just than the God who made me ? 
Am I thus forced to fall, to be a traitor to my secret 
desire for virtue, and then to be sternly punished for 
doing what I had not the strength to escape ? " Such 
thoughts may not be uplifting or inspiring, but they 
are there ; so that a man in this dark valley feels him- 
self to be, indeed, the sport of a vast power who holds 
out the cup of joy and dashes it from the lip, who 
makes alike the way of the saint and the sinner to 
be hard. 

Perhaps the best medicine that can be given to a 
spirit thus brought face to face with the hardest and 
darkest tnith is that he should fi.x his thought firmly 
on the grace and beaixty so abundantly shed abroad in 
the world. Not thus, indeed, can the whole victory 
be won, the victory of the troubled spirit that can say, 
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him"; but 
the message of beauty may form as it were the first 
firm steps by which the soul can climb a little way 



v.] WRITINGS— 0J/.li2 KHAYYAM 117 

out of the abyss. Tlie peril is that the spirit may have 
no strength to climb further, and may loiter with Omar 
in the wilderness, greedy of transient delights, content 
with the strip of herbage that fringes the desert, 
putting off the pilgrimage. 

It is not to be feared that this subtle murmuring 
voice out of the East will win any notable influence in 
the busy world of the West. Yet it is strange how 
we have transmuted that other mightier Eastern voice, 
the message of the Gospel, to serve our own ideals and 
to justify what it set out to condemn. 



CHAPTER VI 

PLAYS EUPIIRANOR LETTERS 

Of the plays to tlie translation of which FitzGerald 
devoted so much time and thought, there is much that 
might be said. But the plain truth is, however mel- 
ancholy a confession it is to make, that they are not 
really worth a very critical examination. We need 
not exactly regret the labour he spent upon them, 
because it was through such exercises that EitzGerald 
gained the command of stately diction that enabled 
him to seize the one supreme chance that fell in his 
way. But they are nothing more than good and 
careful literary work ; here and there rising, in certain 
passages and single lines, into stateliness and beauty. 
Any one who is interested in FitzGerald is glad to 
have the opportunity of seeing how his mind worked ; 
but the plays have no permanent or intrinsic merit 
such as belongs to the Omar and the Letters. 

FitzGerald's theory of such versions as he made is 
best given in his own words, in the Preface which he 
prefixed to the Agamemnon. 

" Thus," he writes, "... this grand play, which, to the 
scholar and the poet, lives, breathes and moves in the dead 
language, has hitherto seemed to me to drag and stifle under 
conscientious ti'anslation into the living ; that is to say, to 
have lost that which I tliink the drama can least afford to lose 
all the world over. And so it was tliat, hopeless of succeeding 
where as good versifiers, and better scholars, seemed to me 
to have failed, I came first to break' the bounds of Greek 

118 



CHAP. VI.] FLAYS — EUFHBANOE ~l.KrTERS 119 

Tragedy ; then to swerve from the Master's footsteps ; and so, 
one licence drawing on another to make all of a piece, arrived 
at the present anomalous conclusion. If it has succeeded in 
shaping itself into a distinct, consistent and animated Whole, 
through which the reader can follow without halting, and not 
without accelerating interest from beginning to end, he will 
perhaps excuse my acknowledged transgressions, and will not 
disdain the Jade which has carried him so far so well till he 
finds himself mounted on a Thorough-bred whose thunder- 
clothed neck and long-resounding pace shall better keep up 
with the Original." 

His general principle of translation was as fol- 
lows : — 

" Well, I have not turned over Johnson's Dictionary for the 
last month, having got hold of ^Eschylus. I think I want to 
turn his Trilogy into what shall be readable English Verse; a 
thing I have always thought of, but was frightened at the 
Chorus. So I am now; I can't think them so fine as People 
talk of : they are terribly maimed ; and all such Lyrics 
require a better Poet than I am to set forth in English. But 
the better Poets won't do it; and I cannot find one readable 
translation. I shall (if I make one) make a very free one ; 
not for Scholars, but for those who are ignorant of Greek, and 
who (so far as I have seen) have never been induced to learn 
it by any Translations yet made of these Plays. I think I shall 
become a bore, of the Bowring order, by all this Translation : 
but it amuses me without any labour, and I really think I 
have the faculty of making some things readable which others 
have hitherto left unreadable." 

But tlie result of this principle has been that Fitz- 
Gerald gives but little idea of the original. Half the 
charm, so to speak, of these ancient human documents 
is their authenticity. Not only the archaic form, the 
statuesque conventionality of the Greek stage, the 
traditions of a once-living art, are sacrificed ; but, what 
is more important still, the very spirit of Greek 
Tragedy, the unshrinking gaze into the darkest horrors 



120 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

of life, the dreadful insistence of Fate, forcing men to 
tread unwillingly in rough and stony paths — these are 
thrown aside. And thus the force, the grim tension, 
which are of the essence of Greek tragedy are re- 
placed by a species of gentle dignity, which leaves 
the stiffness of movement without the compensating 
strength, and the austere frigidity without the antique 
spirit. A kind of flowing and even Shakespearian 
diction takes the place of the gorgeousness of the 
original, but without any of the modern flexibility of 
handling. 

It seems that there are two possibilities open to the 
translator : the first, to make a literal and dignified 
version, which is probably better in prose, of the kind 
of which Sir Kichard Jebb has produced masterly 
specimens. There indeed you are probably as near to 
the ancient Greek as without a knowledge of the 
language you can get. Or else, to produce a frankly 
modern play, just following the lines of the ancient 
drama, and endeavouring to represent movement and 
emotion rather than language. FitzGerald has fallen 
between these two possibilities. The plays are frigid 
but not archaic ; timid where the ancient plays were 
bold ; gentlemanly where the originals were noble. 
They are as like Greek plays as the Eglinton Tourna- 
ment was like a mediaeval Joust; a revival in which 
the spirit, the only thing which justified and enlivened 
the ancient sport, has somehow evaporated. 

In the version of the Q^Jdipns, FitzGerald allows him- 
self great licence, but in the Agamemnon his method is 
still more luxuriant. For instance, when the Herald 
from the host describes the miseries of the life of the 
camp, he says : — 

" Not the mei'e course and casualty of war, 
Alarum, March, Battle, and such hard knocks 



VI.] PLAYS — Z7C7Pifi?^.VOi? — LETTERS 121 

As foe with foe expects to give and take ; 

But all the complement of miseries 

That go to swell a long campaign's account, 

Cramm'd close aboard the ships, hard bed, hard board : 

Or worse perhaps while foraging ashore 

In winter time ; when, if not from the walls, 

Pelted from Heav'n by Day, to couch by Night 

Between the falling dews and rising damps 

Tliat elf'd the locks, and set the body fast 

With cramp and ague ; or, to mend the matter 

Good mother Ida from her winter top 

Flinging us down a coverlet of snow. 

Or worst perhaps in Summer, toiling in 

The bloody harvest-field of torrid sand. 

When not an air stirr'd the fierce Asian noon 

And even the sea sleep-sicken' d in his bed." 

There is no doubt that this is a fine passage. But 
what is the source of it ? — 

" For if I were to tell of the toils and the hard quarters, 
the narrow ill-strewn berths — nay, what day-long privation 
too did we not have to bewail ? and tlien again on land — where 
danger was ever at hand, for we couched close by the walls — 
from heaven and earth alike the meadow dews down-drizzling 
crept, the constant rotting of our raiment, breeding evil 
vermin in our very hair ; and if one were to tell of tlie winter 
that slew the birds themselves, the intolerable cold that the 
snows of Ida brought, or the heat, when the unstirred ocean 
fell and slept in his windless bed." ^ 

Perhaps it is ill to quarrel with a method deliberately- 
adopted ; but it will be seen that it ends in a mere 
wrapping up of the ancient simplicities in an em- 
broidered modern robe ; one who studies FitzGerald's 
Agamemnon may do so for its own sake, but he must 
not think that he is getting near either to the spirit or 
the form of the original. It is idle to speculate to 
what extent FitzGerald himself understood the Greek. 

1 Ag., 560-571. 



122 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Even in the passage above quoted there are clear indica- 
tions that he did not even penetrate the actual meaning ; 
but on his principle, he might defend himself on the 
ground that he conceived the harshness of the images 
to be unsuited for modern taste. 

This is still more noticeable in the lyrical translations 
of the choruses of the Agamemnon, in which FitzGerald 
seems to be hobbling in fetters, dealing with ideas and 
words that have no native existence in our own lan- 
guage except as pedantic attempts to represent in an 
English form thoughts which have no real counterpart 
in English thought. This terrible jargon, well-known 
to schoolmasters, this attempt to transvocalise, so to 
speak, Greek expressions, and to squeeze the juice out 
of the ancient language, strikes dreariness into the 
mind. Such a passage as the following from one of 
the grandest choruses will suffice to illustrate my mean- 
ing:— 

" But now to be resolved, whether indeed 

Those fires of Night spoke truly, or mistold 
To cheat a doatiug woman ; for behold 
Advancing from the shore with solemn speed, 

A Herald from the Fleet, his footsteps roll'd 
In dust. Haste's thirsty consort, but his brow 
Check-shadow'd with the nodding Olive-bough ; 
Who shall interpret us the speechless sign 
Of the fork'd tongue that preys upon the pine ? " 

Who indeed ? This passage is like a turbid stream 
in flood. It is muddy with Greek, it bears Greek 
particles, like river- wrack, floating on its surface. But 
it is neither Greek nor English. It can give no sense 
of pleasure to an English reader ; and to any one who 
can appreciate the original, it only brings a dim sense 
of pain. 

The two versions of the CEdipus are even less satis- 
factory than the Agamemnon ; for there the serene and 



VI.] PLAYS — E UPHEANOE — LETTERS 123 

even flow of Sophocles' diction is co:iverted into what 
it is difficult to distinguish from dulness. And here 
indeed FitzGerald has taken a licence which it is hard 
to condone; for he has transplanted entire into his 
pages the translation of the choruses by Kobert Potter 
(1721-1804), in a mellifluous classical verse, of the 
school of Gray. " As I thought," he writes, " I should 
do no better with the Choruses than old Potter, I 
have left them, as you see, in his hands, though 
worthy of a better interpreter than either of us." 
And he has gone further still by practically omitting 
two of the principal characters in the two plays, 
Creon almost entirely in the first and Ismene entirely 
in the second, for no better reason than that the 
intrusion of characters whom he has the misfortune 
to dislike had appeared to him to be inartistic. 
And this is, I think, a really serious blot ; because 
it is the very dissimilarity of the Greek point of 
view to our own, the different artistic standard, that 
contribute to give these plays their bewildering value. 
The whole essence of the culture which depends upon 
familiarising oneself with the best products of the 
human spirit, is that one should try to put oneself in 
line with the old. To admire a Greek play for the 
modernity which may be found in it, is, I believe, to 
misapprehend the situation altogether. 

With regard to the omission of the character of 
Creon in two of the three scenes where he appears in 
the CEdijms in TJiebes (Tyrannus), it may stand as a 
crucial instance of PitzGerald's methods. In the 
second scene Oedipus overwhelms Creon in a ground- 
less charge of treason; but in spite of this Creon 
appears, in the third scene, in a mood of grave pity and 
magnanimous forbearance. He expresses a deep and 
sincere sympathy for the unhappy king ; he receives 



124 EDWARD TITZGERALD [chap. 

in a spirit of kindly benevolence the pathetic charge of 
(Edipus that his unhappy daughters may be cared for. 
He will not even bring himself to acquiesce in the 
miserable man's entreaties that he may be banished 
from the land, but says gravely that the oracle must 
decide. Thus he plays a vital and integral part in the 
play, and the contrast of his calm yet sorrowing dignity 
with the terrible self-accusation of the ill-fated (Edipus 
is not only intentional, but a lofty piece of art. 

FitzGerald in the prefatory letter to the (Edijms 
excuses himself airily for his omission, by saying that 
from all this " little results except to show that the 
Creon of this Play (the Tijrannus) proves himself by 
his temperate self-defence, and subsequent forbearance 
toward his accuser, very unlike the Creon of the two 
after Tragedies " (the Antigone and the (Edipus Colo- 
neus). But the defence would only be valid if Fitz- 
Gerald had thrown the plot of the (Edipus overboard, 
and constructed a play of his own on the same plot. 
The play in FitzGerald's hands simply ceases to rep- 
resent the original. 

With regard to the Calderon plays we are on very 
much the same ground. Calderon was essentially a 
lyrical poet, and without being ungenerous to his art 
it may be doubted whether, with all his mastery of 
ingenious stage-craft, he was really altogether at home 
in dramatic form. 

However indulgently one may try to judge Fitz- 
Gerald's versions of Calderon, they cannot be reckoned 
among his literary successes. It is probable that 
FitzGerald did not really understand Calderon, and 
it is not unfair to say that we have here a marked 
instance of FitzGerald's friendships Massing his studies. 
It was no doubt the influence of Cowell that turned 
his mind definitely to Calderon. It is probable that 



VI.] PLAYS — E UPHRANOB — LETTERS 125 

Cowell did not introduce FitzGerald to Calderon, 
though he iindoubtedly blew the smouldering ashes 
to a flame. England was full of Spanish liberals 
from 1823 to 1833. Archbishop Trench was a trans- 
lator of Calderon, and Tennyson mentions Calderon 
in a suppressed stanza of The Palace of Art; so that 
it is probable that Calderon was not unknown in 
FitzGerald's Cambridge circle. 

FitzGerald can hardly have cared instinctively for 
the Spanish dramatist, for it is impossible to conceive 
two temperaments that were more radically unlike. 
Calderon was a man of exemplary virtue ; but he was a 
courtier to the fingers' ends. He enjoyed the splendid 
pageants, the gracious shows of life, and was a master 
of the arts of courtly living. What may be called 
Ms "profane" plays were chiefly written to please 
Philip IV., and to be acted at court performances. 
The plays — autos, as they are called — with a religious 
or "sacramental" motive-^ belong to a much higher 
order of genius. All this was entirely antipathetic to 
FitzGerald. Calderon was conventional, magnificent, 
worldly-minded, with a background of mysticism. 
FitzGerald hated conventionality in every form, clung 
to the simple and retired life, feared and hated the 
din of the great glittering world. Again, where Cal- 
deron was mystical, FitzGerald was agnostic. It is 
surely significant that in the 1853 volume, containing 
versions of six of Calderon's plays, FitzGerald admits 
that, with the exception of TJie Mayor of Zalamea 
(which is in reality a play of Lope's recast), none of 
Calderon's masterpieces are attempted. A man who 
could begin with the inferior works of the author he 

1 The auto is a species of mystical or allegorical play, based 
ou the mediaeval Mystery plays, and with the Eucharist for 
motif. 



126 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

was translating could not have been greatly in earnest 
about his task. He did afterwards attempt two of 
the undoubted masterpieces, Tlte Mighty Magician and 
Be ware of Smooth Water ; but these were an afterthought. 

Again, it must be borne in mind that Calderon was 
a very artificial writer, and belonged to an extremely 
definite school. He abounds in preciosities and what 
may be called affectations both of manner and of 
thought. In the first place he is what would be called 
in English " Euphuistic " ; his style is full of audacities 
and conceits, and of subtle refinements of thought. 
These are far from being the best part of Calderon ; 
but the texture of his writings is so impregnated by 
them that they may be held to be absolutely essential 
to his style. FitzGerald omits and compresses, with 
the result that the airy grace and the fine elegance 
disappear ; some of the poetry remains, but it is 
transposed into a different key ; it is as when a bass 
sings a rearranged air intended for a tenor ; it is 
quiet and homely instead of lustrous and brilliant. 
The result is that no one could really gain any idea 
of the characteristic manner of Calderon from Eitz- 
Gerald's version. 

EitzGerald thus makes no pretence about the matter ; 
he says frankly that he omitted these things because 
he did not care for them. But when we remember 
that Calderon cared for them, and that the whole 
Spanish nation cared for them, and that they repre- 
sent an unbroken literary tradition of two centuries 
and a half, the confession is tantamovlnt to saying 
that FitzGerald did not really care for Calderon. It 
remains then that by getting rid of what he called 
bombast, and recklessly throwing overboard unfamiliar 
idioms, EitzGerald is really shirking his most formid- 
able difficulties. 



VI.] TLAYS — EUPHBAXOIi — LETTERS 127 

As a rule he does not actually interpolate much, 
but rather touches up the lines by adding epithets 
and adverbs, doing what Gray called " sticking a flower 
in the buttonhole." 

It is strange that FitzGerald. was able to do the 
very thing for Omar that he could not do for Calderon : 
to seize and represent and. even add intensity to the 
very essence of the writer. But though Calderon has 
been called by so fine a critic as Lowell an Arab soul 
in Spanish feathers, it is a misapprehension. There 
is nothing Oriental about Calderon. He is a Euro- 
pean, a modern, one of ourselves ; and it was precisely 
with the modern spirit that Fitzgerald was not in 
sympathy, whereas he was to a considerable extent 
in sympathy with the Oriental spirit. Again, the 
variety of metrical forms used in the Spanish drama 
is remarkable. Calderon varies his measures with 
great skill and frequency, never sinking to prose; a?nd 
thus the effect of the blank verse with occasional rhyme 
endings, interspersed with a few lyrical passages and 
even many passages of plain prose, employed by Fitz- 
Gerald is misleading and monotonous. Shelley's 
version of the Magico Prodigioso is far more Calder- 
onian than anything in Fitzgerald, and proves that to 
represent Calderon in English was not an altogether 
impossible task. 

It may be noted that FitzGerald's knowledge of 
Spanish was . very limited. And again, it is clear 
that FitzGerald is very unsure about quantities, and 
that the accent shifts, in the proper names he uses, 
from syllable to syllable in a perplexing way. This 
shows that he was not really very familiar with the 
language ; and lastly, it appears that he had frequent 
recourse to his dictionary even when reading Cer- 
vantes. If this was so with Cervantes, it must 



128 EDWAliD FITZGERALD [chap. 

have been far more the case with Cakleron, whose 
vocabulary is much richer and more complex. But 
the conclusion that is forced upon us is that Fitz- 
Gerald's equipment in Spanish was such as to make 
it impossible for him to be an adequate interpreter 
of a writer both intricate and difficult in a language 
in which he was never really more than an enthu- 
siastic learner. These liberties and licences no doubt 
account for the very unfavourable review which ap- 
peared in the Athenanon ^ of FitzGerald's translation. 
The reviewer was John Eutter Chorley, one of the 
best Spanish scholars that England has ever produced. 
This review disconcerted FitzGerald extremely; but 
Chorley was not quite just to his victim. Indeed, 
in an extract professedly quoted from FitzGerald, 
Chorley, besides making two misquotations, actually 
puts " zALAMCA (sic)," thereby giving the impression 
of- the grossest carelessness on FitzGerald's part. 
The original, it is true, is clumsily printed, so 
that the letter c often resembles the letter e; yet 
in this case FitzGerald gave the word correctly, 

ZALAMEA. 

The language employed by FitzGerald in the trans- 
lation is a stately and flowing modern blank verse. 
There is no sign that he aimed at imitating any 
special English Avriter. There is an occasional ten- 
dency to the use of rather recondite words and com- 
binations such as "thrasonical," "mis-arrogates," but 
as a rule he evidently tries to avoid anything that is 
unusual or bizarre. It is difficult, with the space at 
my command, to give any idea of the style employed, 
but I will quote one passage, where it is obvious that 
great pains have been taken with the version, from 
Such Sh(ff as Dreams are made of. Segismund, the 
1 September 10, 1853, p. 1063, No. 1350, wrongly indexed. 



Ti.] FIjAYS — E UPIIBAXOB — 'LKn'ERS 129 

King of Poland's son, lias drunk the potion, and, still 
fevered by the draught, soliloquises : — 



"Segismund (loithin). . . . Forbear! I stifle with your 
perfume ! Cease 
Your crazy salutations ! Peace, I say — 
Begone, or let me go, ere I go mad 
With all this babble, mummery, and glare. 
For I am growing dangerous — Air ! room ! air ! 

(He rtishes in. Music ceases.) 
Oh, but to save this reeling brain from wreck 
With its bewildered senses ! 

(He covers his eyes for a while.) 
What ! Ev'n now 
That Babel left behind me, but my eyes 
Pursued by the same glamour, that — unless 
Alike bewitch'd too — the confederate sense 
Vouches for palpable : bright-shining floors 
That ring hard answer back to the stamp'd heel, 
And shoot up airy columns marble-cold, 
That, as they climb, break into golden leaf 
And capital, till they embrace aloft 
In clustering flower and fruitage over walls 
Hung with such purple curtain as tlie West 
Fringes with such a gold ; or over-laid 
With sanguine-glowing semblances of men. 
Each in his all but living action busied. 
Or from the wall they look from, with fix'd eyes 
Pursuing me ; and one most strange of all 
That, as I pass'd the crystal on the wall, 
Look'd from it — left it — and as I return, 
Returns, and looks me face to face again — 
Unless some false reflection of my brain. 
The outward semblance of myself. — Myself ? 
How know that tawdry shadow for myself, 
But that it moves as I move ; lifts his hand 
With mine ; each motion echoing so close 
The immediate suggestion of the will 
In which myself I recognise — Myself ! — 
What, this fantastic Segismund the same 

K 



130 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Who last night, as for all his nights before, 

Lay down to sleep in wolf-skin on the ground 

In a black turret which the wolf howl'cl round, 

And woke again upon a golden bed, 

Round which as clouds about a rising sun, 

In scarce less glittering caparison, 

Gather'd gay shapes that, underneath a breeze 

Of music, handed him upon their knees 

The wine of heaven in a cup of gold, 

And still in soft melodious under-song 

Hailing me Prince of Poland ! — ' Segismund,' 

They said, ' Our Prince ! The Prince of Poland ! ' and 

Again, ' Oh, welcome, welcome to his own, 

Our own Prince Segismund.' " 



Though it is plain that much literary skill has been 
lavished on such lines as these, it must be confessed, 
when all is said and done, that the plays cannot take high 
rank as art. We feel that it is neither FitzGerald nor 
Calderon. It is accomplished and stately, but there is 
a want of dramatic sympathy, a want of tire and glow 
for which no execution, however careful, can atone. 

We must now turn to the only deliberately planned 
and elaborately executed piece of prose which Fitz- 
Gerald carried out. 

The Euphranor is a pretty piece of delicate writing 
cast in the mould of a dialogue of Plato. The draynatis 
person(jea.re four undergraduates, Euphranor, Lexilogus, 
Lycion, and Phidippus, and the narrator, who is a 
physician supposed to be practising at Cambridge, 
nearly twice the age of his companions. He is reading 
a inedical treatise in his room at Cambridge, when 
Euphranor, a somewhat shadowy enthusiast, bursts in 
upon him and insists upon his going by boat with him 
to Chesterton. They take with them Lexilogus, a 
reclusive scholar, and the talk falls upon Chivalry, the 



VI.] rLAYS — ^^PilJ^^liVOi? — LETTERS 131 

subject being suggested by Kenelm Digby's Godefridus,^ 
a copy of which Euphranor carries with him. They 
reach Chesterton. Lexilogus goes off to call upon an 
elderly relative who lives there. The Protagonist and 
Euphranor go to the Three Tuns Inn, where they fall 
in with Lycion, a young man of fashion, who is some- 
thing of a fop. They talk discursively, till Lycion 
goes away to play billiards. The others go for a 
walk, and fall in with Phidippus, who is riding, a 
cheerful, wholesome-minded, brisk young sportsman. 
They dine together, play bowls, and walk home in 
the cool of the evening. The sentiment that binds 
together the somewhat incongruous companions is that 
all the party, except Lycion, are Yorkshiremen. 

The talk itself ranges discursively from chivalry to 
education, corporal punishment, and on to literature ; 
the exact motif is somewhat difficult to disentangle. It 
reminds one of the criticism recorded to have been 
made by Jowett on the essay read to him by an en- 
thusiastic undergraduate. Jowett heard it in silence ; 
the subject, it must be said, was some precise one, such 
as the Eleatic School of Philosophy ; but the writer 
had made the mistake of imagining that anything 
which came into his mind was relevant to the question 
under discussion. When the shrill tide of uninter- 
rupted eloquence died away, Jowett said drily, *' I do 
not observe that you have been following any particular 
line of thought." 

The same impression prevails at the conclusion of 
the Euphranor ; but it may be said generally that an 
attempt is made to arrive at a definition of the well- 
balanced and well-proportioned man, and of the value 
of physical strength and athletics in counterbalancing 
an undue amount of sensibility and imaginativeness. 
1 The first i^art of The Broad Stone of Honour. 



132 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Lycion and Phidippns seem to be introduced as types. 
Lycion is intended, I believe, to be a figure resembling 
Alcibiades, where the generous and natural impulses 
of youth are vitiated by indolence and foppishness. 
Phidippus, who is meant to be the most admirable 
character in the dialogue, is the simple-hearted and 
honest type of country gentleman, in whom the 
physical side overbalances the intellectual. He was 
confessedly drawn from FitzGerald's friend, W. K. 
Browne, Lexilogus is no doubt a type of a nature 
where there is an over-preponderance of the intellectual 
element ; but he is represented as a humble-minded and 
ingenuous person. Euphranor is, of course, the hero, 
impulsive, ardent, and impatient ; while the Doctor 
acts as a kind of genial and elderly moderator. 

But the characters do not sufficiently reveal them- 
selves in their talk, and the dramatic interest is small. 
The conversation is a little heavy, somewhat man- 
nerised, and neither quite idealistic or realistic enough. 
One feels that the impatience of Lycion, who with- 
draws from the talk in favour of a game of billiards, is 
justified. " If I can't help being," he says with Platonic 
petulance, " the very fine Fellow whom I think you were 
reading about, I want to know what is the use of writ- 
ing books about it for my edification." The whole 
tone is academical and frigid, and even the pleasantries, 
which are carefully interspersed, are somewhat in the 
style of Mr. Barlow. "It is not eas}^," PitzGerald 
wrote to Cowell when he was at work on the Euphranor, 
" to keep to good dialectic, and yet keep up the dis- 
jected sway of natural conversation. . . . Any such 
trials of one's own show one the art of such dialogues 
as Plato's, where the process is so logical and conver- 
sational at once. . . . They remain the miracles of 
that Art to this day." 



VI.] PLAYS — Sf/Pi//? .4 xVOB — LETTERS 133 

His own feeling about the book is well recorded in 
another letter to Cowell : — 

" Not but 1 think the Truth is tokl : only, a Truth every 
one knows ! Aud told in a shape of Dialogue really something 
Platonic : but I doubt rather affectedly too. However, such 
as it is, I send it you. I remember being anxious about it 
twenty years ago, because I thought it was the Truth (as if my 
telling it could mend the matter !) ; and I cannot but think 
that the Generation that has grown up in these twenty years 
has not profited by the Fifty Thousand Cojiies of this great 
work ! " 

At the same time there are pleasant touches of 
natural description throughout, such as " the new- 
shaven expanse of grass," when they embark in the 
Backs, " the Chestnut ... in full fan, and leaning 
down his white cones over the sluggish current, which 
seems fitter for the slow merchandise of coal, than to 
wash the walls and flow through the groves of Aca- 
deme." And, again, there is the concluding passage 
of the dialogue, so often quoted by those who praise 
the little book that one is disposed to wonder whether 
the reputation for beautiful style which it enjoys is 
not mainly based upon the sentence. They walk 
hoiue " across the meadow leading to the town, Avhither 
the dusky troops of Gownsmen with all their confused 
voices seem'd as it were evaporating in the twilight, 
while a Nightingale began to be heard among the 
flowering Chestnuts of Jesus." 

There are, too, charming passages about the poets 
that come under discussion. The Canterbury Pilgrims 
are described, " and one among them taking note of 
all, in Verse still fresh as the air of those Kentish 
hills they travelled over on that April morning four 
hundred years ago." 

Again, he writes of Wordsworth, that the strength 



ISi EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

he had won by active exercise was so great " that he 
may still be seen, I am told, at near upon Eighty, 
travelling with the shadow of the cloud up Helvellyn." 
Perhaps the most interesting passages are those that 
refer to Tennyson, embodying anecdotes and dicta 
which have since become familiar in biographies. Here 
is a fine passage depicting Tennyson as he appeared in 
the eye of his contemporaries. Euphranor is speaking 
of the melancholy of Burns's "Ye Banks and Braes." 



" Are you not forgetting," said I, " that Burns was not then 
singing of himself, but of some forsaken damsel, as appears by 
the second stanza? which few, by the way, care to remember. 
Asunremember'd it may have been," I continued after apause, 
" by the only living — and like to live — Poet I had known, 
when, so many years after, he found himself beside that 
' bonny Doon,' and — whether it were from recollection of poor 
Burns, or of ' the days that are no more,' which haunt lis all, 
I know not — I think he did not know — but he somehow 
' broke ' as he told me, ' broke into a passion of tears.' — Of 
tears which, during a pretty long and intimate intercourse, I 
had never seen glisten in his eye but once, when reading 
Virgil — 'dear old Virgil, as he call'd him — together; and 
then of the burning of Troy in the second jEneid — whether 
moved by the catastrophe's self, or the majesty of the Verse 
it is told in — or, as before, scarce knowing why. For, as 
King Arthur shall bear witness, no young Edwin he, though, 
as a great Poet, comprehending all the softer stops of human 
Emotion in that Register where the Intellectual, no less than 
what is called the Poetical, faculty predominated. As all who 
knew him know, a Man at all points, Eupln-anor, like your 
Digby, of grand proportion and feature, significant of that 
inward Chivalry, becoming his ancient and honourable race, 
when himself a ' Yonge Squire,' like him in Chaucer ' of grete 
strength,' that could hurl the crowbar further than any of the 
neighbouring clowns, whose humours, as well as of their bet- 
ters — Knight, Squire, Landlord, and Land-tenant — betook 
gniet note of, like Chaucer himseLf. Like your Wordsworth 



VI.] TLA.YS — EUriIRANOR — l,Y.TTEllS 135 

on the Mountain, he too, when a Lad, abroad on the TVold; 
sometimes of a night with the Shepherd; watching not only 
the Flock on the greensward, but also 

" ' The fleecy Star that bears 
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas,' 

along with those other Zodiacal constellations which Aries, I 
think, leads over the field of Heaven. He then observed also 
some of those uncertain phenomena of Night : unsurmised 
apparitions of the Northern Aurora, by some shy glimpses 
of which no winter — no, nor even summer — night, he said, 
was utterly unvisited ; and those strange voices, whether of 
creeping brook, or copses muttering to themselves far off — 
perhaps the yet more impossible Sea — together with ' other 
sounds we know not whence they come,' says Crabbe, but all 
inaudible to the ear of Day. He was not then, I suppose, 
unless the Word spontaneously came upon him, thinking how 
to turn what he saw and heard into Verse ; a premeditation 
that is very likely to defeat itself, previously breathing, as it 
were, upon the mirror which is to receive the Image that 
most assuredly flashes Reality into words." 

Eiiphranor Avas published in 1851. FitzGerald was 
not particularly proud of it, calling it ''a pretty 
specimen of a chiselled cherry-stone." He altered it a 
good deal at a later date. 

He seems at all events to have been thoroughly 
in earnest when he wrote the dialogue ; and it is 
curious to consider how entirely the state of things that 
it reflects has disappeared. It seems almost incredible 
that fifty years ago it should have been necessary to 
put in a plea for physical exercise at School and 
College ; that it shovild be necessary to plead that 
Burns's poetry was no worse because he had followed 
the plough, or that Gibbon's History was not vitiated 
by his having been an officer in the Hampshire 
Militia. If FitzGerald could now write a dialogue on 
the subject of athletics, it is probable that he would 



136 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

have delicately chastised the undue importance attached 
to them. 

But the little book remains, penetrated with the 
delicate fragrance of a poetical spirit, with the strong 
sense of beauty, and with the pathos of the brevity of 
happiness, which was the dominant strain in Fitz- 
Gerald's mind. 

Yet it is not from the Euphranor, charming and 
artistic as it is, that FitzGerald will win any perma- 
nence of reputation. 

Next to the Omar Khayydm, there is little doubt that 
FitzGerald's best title to literary fame will be derived 
from his letters. The Omar forms, as it were, a 
pedestal for his fame ; without it FitzGerald's other 
works would not have received, and, it may be frankly 
said, would hardly have deserved attention. 

But the statue, sj to speak, which will stand upon 
the pedestal, is the strange, remote, tender, wistful 
personality which the letters reveal. Indeed the 
figure can hardly be said to stand ; rather the easy, 
unconsidered, natural pose recalls to the mind the Sic 
sedebat of the statue of Bacon at Trinity College, 
Cambridge. There is no studied gesture, no draping 
of honourable robes ; but the man himself, with his 
virtues and his faults, his strength and weakness, 
beauty-loving, loyal, irresolute, and listless, is before 
you as he lived. 

The one condition that makes letters memorable is 
that they should reveal personality. But in England, 
we are so enamoured of definite achievement that we 
scarcely care to read the letters of any except those 
who have won for themselves a fame in other regions. 
It might be that one who desired to tread a new path of 
literary renown could devote himself Avith a single eye 
to letter-writing. But there are several disadvantages 



VI.] VLAYS — JBUFHBAXOB — LETTERS 137 

attending tlie practice. The first is that any renown 
attainable is almost bound to be posthumous ; and there 
are few literary men who could, so put away the desire 
for contemporary fame as to pour their mind and 
heart into the task. Then, again, the fame of a letter- 
writer is at the mercy of accidents ; his correspondents 
may not preserve the documents. It is possible to 
do as Pope and J. A. Symonds did, and preserve copies 
of letters, even to annotate them for future publication. 
But this is to make the business a pompous one, and to 
wipe off the bloom which is half the delight of beauti- 
ful letters, the bloom of a careless naturalness. 

FitzGerald's letters will please by a sort of confiding 
and childlike wistfulness, which is never undignified, 
combined with a delicate humour, a shrewd e3'e for 
all that is characteristic, an admirable power of brief 
and picturesque description, and by a style which is at 
once familiar and stately. The earlier letters have 
more stateliness than the latter, and the only sign of 
youth in them is a sort of deliberate quaintness and 
even pomposity, which fell away from him in his later 
years. His letters, like Charles Lamb's, are full of 
echoes, echoes of books and voices and the sweet sounds 
of nature. The letters are never dull ; even the most 
detailed and domestic have that evasive quality called 
charm ; and the style, though it is seldom elaborate, 
always walks with a certain daintiness and precision. 
There are many little mannerisms in the letters, which, 
like all mannerisms, please if the personality pleases. 
Such are FitzGerald's use of initial capitals to indicate 
emphatic substantives — "1 like plenty of Capitals," he 
used to say — and his unique punctuation, which brings 
the very gradations of voice and pauses of thought 
before the reader. Both of these mannerisms were 
taken, I believe, to a great extent from Crabbe. 



138 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

FitzGerald's management of paragraphs is another 
salient characteristic; and he has, moreover, a peculiar 
delicacy in his use of paragraph endings, which close 
the passage as it were with a certain snap, leaping 
briskly from the page, instead of dying feebly away 
into silence. 

Again, FitzGerald's handling of anecdote is another 
salient characteristic of his style. Nowadays letter- 
writers are, as a rule, far too much in a hurry to deal 
in anecdotes. But FitzGerald tells a story with 
delighted zest, repeating it to different correspondents 
frequently. He had, too, a marvellous sense of pathos ; 
not the superficial pathos which depends upon acci- 
dents, but the pathos which has its root in the lacrimoe 
rerum. 

Being confidential by temperament, FitzGerald 
needed some one to confess to, to gossip to, to be sad 
or merry with, according to his mood. He wrote to 
Allen in 1832 : — 

" I am of that superior race of men, that are quite content 
to hear themselves talk, and read their own writing. But, in 
seriousness, I hav^e such love of you, and of myself, that once 
every week, at least, I feel spurred on by a sort of gathering 
up of feelings to vent myself in a letter upon you : hut if 
once I hear you say that it makes your conscience thus uneasy 
till you answer, I shall give it up. Upon my word, I tell you, 
that I do not in the least require it. You, who do not love 
writing, cannot think that any one else does : but I am sorry 
to say that I have a very young-lady-like partiality to writing 
to those that I love. . . ." 

But beside the humanity of the letters there is a 
grateful sense of leisureliness about them. These 
letters are not written in the train, like the letters of 
eminent Bishops, nor dashed off against tiine, as by 
statesmen waiting to keep an appointment ; they are 



VI.] Y'LAYS — EUPHEANOE — I.^TTE'RS 139 

rather written gently and equably in the firelit room, 
with the curtains drawn, and the cat purring beside the 
hearth ; or in the pleasant summer, with the windows 
open, and the scent of roses in the air. They are not 
written with any motive, except to have a confidential 
talk with an absent friend ; and, what is one of the 
greatest charms of good letters, they are not written to 
a correspondent but from the writer. They are not 
replies ; but with a gentle egotism, they give picture 
after picture of the simple life FitzGerald was leading. 
They preserve the moment, the hour, the scene ; they 
indicate the thought just as it rose fresh in the author's 
mind. I imagine that FitzGerald had one special 
felicity in framing these letters ; he was not a conver- 
sationalist of a high order ; his reflective mind did not 
move briskly enough. But one cannot resist the feel- 
ing that his mind worked exactly as fast as he wrote ; 
the thought never outruns the expression : the expres- 
sion never lags behind the thought. 

Another great charm of the letters is their inimit- 
able humour; it is not wit in FitzGerald's case so 
much as a subtle, permeating medium which penetrates 
a whole passage and lends it a delicate aroma. It is 
difficult to give instances of a quality Avhich, as it were, 
rather soaks a whole letter than gathers at salient 
points ; but I select a few short passages. 

Thus, in one of his most delightful letters to Barton, 
he describes with humorous pomposity an invitation 
he had received to give a lecture : — 

" If I do not see you before I go to London, I shall 
assuredly be down again by the latter part of February ; 
when toasted cheese and ale shall again unite our souls. 
You need not however expect that I can return to such 
familiar intercourse as once (in former days) passed between 
us. New honours in society have devolved upon nie the 



140 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap, 

necessity of a more dignified deportment. A letter has been 
sent from the Secretary of the Ipswicli Mechanics' Institution 
asking me to Lecture — any subject but Party Politics or 
Controversial Divinity. On my politely declining, another, 
a fuller, and a more pressing letter was sent urging me to 
comply with their demand : I answered to the same effect, 
but with accelerated dignity. I am now awaiting the third 
request in confidence: if you see no symptoms of its being 
mooted, perhaps you will kindly propose it. I have prepared 
an answer. Donne is mad with envy. 

And when was ever so much colour and rhetoric ex- 
pended on a question of poultry ? 

" It occurs to me that, when I last saw you, you gave me 
hopes of finding a Chanticleer to replace that aged fellow you 
saw in my Domains. He came from Grundisburgh ; and 
surely you spoke of some such Bird flourishing in Grundis- 
burgh still. I will not hold out for the identical plumage — 
worthy of an Archangel — I only stipulate for one of the sort : 
such as are seen in old Story books ; and on Church-vanes ; 
with a plume of Tail, a lofty Crest and Walk, and a shrill 
trumpet-note of Challenge : and splendid colours ; black and 
red; black and Gold; white, and red, and Gold! Only so 
as he be 'gay,' according to old Suffolk speech. 

" AVell, of course you won't trouble yourself about this : 
only don't forget it, next time you ride through Grundis- 
burgh. Or if, in the course of any Ride, you should see any 
such Bird, catch him up at once upon your Saddle-bow, and 
bring him to the distressed Widows on my Estate." 

Or he could describe with humorous perception 
the foibles even of those whom he devotedly loved. 
He wrote to Mrs. Kemble : — 

" I have been having Frederic Tennyson with me down 
here. He has come to England (from Jersey where his home 
now is) partly on Business, and partly to bring over a deaf 
old Gentleman who has discovered the Original Mystery of 
Freemasonry, by means of Spiritualism. Tiie Freemasons 
have for Ages been ignorant, it seems, of the very Secret 



VI.] FLAYS — EUPIIBANOIl — l.^TTEnS 141 

■which all their Emblems and Signs refer to : and the question 
is, if they care enough for their own Mystery to buy it of 
this ancient Gentleman. If they do not, he will shame them 
by Publishing it to all the world. Frederic Tennyson, who 
has long been a Swedenborgian, a Spiritualist, and is now 
even himself a Medium, is quite grand and sincere in this as 
in all else : with the Faith of a Gigantic Child — pathetic and 
yet humorous to consider and consort with." 

The following is not a criticism — only a Shake- 
spearian handling of gossip : — 

" Have you heard that Arthur Malkin is to be married? to a 
Miss Carr, with what Addison might call a pleasing fortune: 
or perhaps Nicholas Rowe. ' Sweet, pleasing friendship, etc. 
etc' Mrs. Malkin is in high spirits about it, I hear: and I 
am very glad indeed. God send that you have not heard this 
before : for a man likes to be the first teller of a p)retty piece 
of news." 

One of the special powers which FitzGerald possessed 
as a letter-writer is his capacity to touch off a little 
vignette of a scene : these tiny pictures are like Bewick 
translated into prose, simple, homely, even fantastic, 
but always just suffused with a sentiment, a tender 
emotion. Such is the picture he draws of the old 
English Manor-house, holding up its inquiring chimneys 
and weathercocks, which could be espied by sailors 
out on the restless sea, or his cottage thatch perforated 
by lascivious sparrows, or the white clouds moving 
over the new-fledged tops of oak-trees. 

Here is a little sketch of a windy night in the marshy 
flats of Woodbridge : — 

" Three nights ago I looked out at about ten o'clock at 
night, before going to bed. It seemed pei'fectly still ; frosty, 
and the stars shining bright. I heard a continuous moaning 
sound, which I knew to be, not that of an infant exposed, or 
female ravished, but of the sea, more than ten miles off! 
What little wind there was carried to us the murmurs of the 



142 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

wave circulating round these coasts so far over aflat country. 
But people here think that this sound so heard is not from the 
waves that break, but a kind of proplietic voice from the body 
of the sea itself announcing great gales. . . ." 

Here is a tiuy characterisation of the Oleander : — 

" Don't you love the Oleander ? So clean in its leaves and 
stem, as so beautiful in its flower ; loving to stand in water, 
which it drinks up so fast. I rather worship mine." 

Here lie sits, in a dry month, old and blind, being 
read to by a country boy, longing for rain : — 

" Last night when Miss Tox was just coming, like a good 
Soul, to ask about the ruined Dombey, we heard a Splash of 
Rain, and I had the Book shut up, and sat listening to the 
Shower by myself — till it blew over, I am sorry to say, and 
no more of the sort all night. But we are thankful for that 
small mercy." 

Again, another delight of these letters is the full- 
furnislied mind out of which they proceeded. Fitz- 
Gerald's brain was like the magic isle — 

" Full of noises, 
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not." 

The old music of bygone singers, rich haunting 
sentences of old leisurely authors, rang in his brain, 
and came unbidden to his pen. 

Then, too, there is a great plenty of the finest 
critical appreciation throughout the letters. His 
friendship with Professor Norton, near the end of 
his life, seems to have called this faculty out with 
especial prodigality. I suppose that with his old 
and intimate friends FitzGerald thought that his 
literary preferences and critical judgments might 
have a certain air of familiarity. But to this apprecia- 
tive stranger from the new world he opened his mind, 



VI.] TLAYii — EUPHEANOB — 'Ly.TTEllS 143 

and, like the wise householder, brought out of his 
treasure things new and old. 

FitzGerald had, too, another characteristic which 
stood him in good stead ; he was innately and by 
training a great gentleman; and thus he never com- 
plains. He admits his correspondent by swift and 
humorous touches into his troubles and little afflictions ; 
but always with a kind of gentle contempt for his own 
weakness in being vexed by such slight annoyances. 
He was very fond of the story of the rich gentleman 
whom John Wesley visited, who, when the chimney 
smoked, cried out with Christian resignation, " These 
are some of the crosses, Mr. Wesley, that I have to 
bear." FitzGerald disliked obtruding his own afflic- 
tions. He felt them with an increasing impatience, 
but he never inflicts them upon his correspondent; he 
never airs a grievance. 

Of his graver sorrows he hardly dares to speak. 
Again and again he closes the door upon grief with 
a kind of noble and Stoical resignation. Yet the result 
is that the reader of the letters feels that he is being 
confided in ; he never loses the sense of intimite, while 
at the same time he is never bored by a want of 
perspective. 

FitzGerald had, moreover, a very true and instinc- 
tive judgment of people. He had many weaknesses 
of his own, but he was acutely observant of the 
foibles of others. And he had, too, the spectatorial 
power of extracting a kind of critical pleasure out of 
salient indications of personality. And all this with 
a lightness of touch which never presses hard upon 
a delicate effect, never degenerates into tediousness or 
twaddle. 

Of course the letters will not suit every one. Eeaders 
who are in search of definite facts and definite anec- 



144 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

dotes, who prefer precise scandal about historical 
personages to subtle revelations of character and 
personality, may think there is much sauce and little 
meat. But FitzGerald's letters, though they contain 
interesting incidental reminiscences of distinguished 
persons, will be read more for the subtle aroma which 
pervades them than as solid contributions to the liter- 
ary history of the time. He himself set no great value 
on his letters. " I don't think letter-writing men are 
much worth," he wrote to Lowell in 1878. Yet, if 
only FitzGerald could thus have taken the whole world 
into his confidence, instead of a few dear friends only, 
he might have proved a great and moving writer ; but 
he needed the personal relation, the individual tie, to 
call out his tender, melancholy thought. 

It is a task of great difficulty to endeavour to fix 
the position of FitzGerald with regard to the literary 
tradition of the age. The truth is that he was essen- 
tially an amateur ; he was enabled by a curious con- 
juncture of fortunate circumstances to give to the 
world one minute piece of absolutely first-rate work. 
But the Omar cannot be said to have afEected the 
stream of English poetry very deeply ; it has not 
turned the current of poetical thought in the direction 
of Oriental verse ; moreover, the language of the Omar, 
stately and beautiful as it is, has no modernity about 
it ; it is not a development, but a reverting to older 
traditions, a memorable graft, so to speak, of a bygone 
style. 

FitzGerald's position with regard to the poetry that 
was rising and swelling about him is as that of a 
stranded boat on a lee-shore. He could not bring 
himself into line with modern verse at all; he had 
none of the nineteenth-century spirit. Yet he is in 



VI.] PLAYS — E UPHBANOB — LETTE KS 145 

the forefront of those who, standing apart from the 
direct current of the time, seem destined to make the 
Victorian age furnish a singularly rich anthology of 
beautiful poetry. How many poets there are in the 
last century whose work does not entitle them to be 
called great poets, who yet have produced a very little 
of the best quality of poetry. The same is singularly 
true of the Elizabethan age, which produced not only 
great poets, but a large number of poetasters whose 
work rises in a few lyrics into the very front rank. 

With FitzGerald it may be plainly said that, with 
the exception of Omar and Hie Meadows in Spring, 
all the rest of his deliberate work in verse is second- 
rate, the product of a gifted and accomplished amateur. 

But, in prose, there still remain the wonderful letters ; 
and these have a high value, both for their beautiful 
and original literary form, for the careless picture they 
give of a certain type of retired and refined country 
life, for their unconsidered glimpses of great personali- 
ties, and for the fact that they present a very peculiar 
and interesting point of view, a delicate criticism of 
life from a highly original standpoint. The melancholy 
which underlies the letters is not a practical or inspir- 
ing thing, but it is essentially true ; and it carries with 
it a sad refinement, a temperate waiting upon the 
issues of life, a sober resignation, which are pure and 
noble. FitzGerald, by his lover-like tenderness of 
heart, his wistful desire to clasp hands with life, was 
enabled to resist the temptation, apt to beset similar 
temperaments, to sink into a dreary silence about the 
whole unhappy business. And thus there emerges a 
certain gentle and pathetic philosophy, not a philosophy 
for the brisk, the eager, and the successful, but a philo- 
sophy for all who find their own defects of character 
too strong for them, and yet would not willingly 



116 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. vi. 

collapse into petulant bitterness. FitzGerald is a sort 
of sedate Hamlet; the madness that wrought in his 
brain does not emerge in loud railings, or in tem- 
pestuous and brief agonies of desperate action ; but it 
emerges in many gentle gestures and pathetic beckon- 
ings, and a tender desire, in a world where so much is 
dark, that men should cling all together and float into 
the darkness. There are many who cannot believe and 
cannot act — and for these, as for FitzGerald, it seems 
best to hold fast to all that is dear and beautiful. To 
such as these FitzGerald speaks heart to heart ; and, 
after all, no gifts of style, no brisk technique, can ever 
take the place of that closeness of fellowship, which 
seems to be the only human power that may perhaps 
defy even Death. 



CHAPTER VII 



criticism: 



FitzGerald's letters are full of critical judgments, per- 
sonal predilections in literature, art, and music, little 
pronouncements, nice appreciations. He was more of a 
connoisseur than a critic, a taster of fragrant essences, 
an inhaler of subtle aromas. But his perception of 
quality was so innate, and his discriminating attitude 
so integral a part of his temperament and character, 
that it is advisable to treat his critical position separ- 
ately. As a critic, he is remarkable not so much for 
his largeness and sureness, as for his delicacy and 
subtlety. His field was limited; the fine fibres of his 
sympathy could not wholly permeate the mass of 
literature ; affectation, pedantry, mannerisms of cer- 
tain kinds, erected as it were a fence about particular 
authors which he could not penetrate. His reading 
was in one way wider and in another way narrower 
than that of most of his contemporaries. He was not 
so much insular as eclectic; differences of national 
spirit and an unfamiliar medium of language rather 
stimulated than hindered his appreciation. What did 
hamper him were certain almost pettish, childish, 
feminine prejudices of his own mind and taste. If an 
author irritated him at the outset, he did not try to 
understand him; in this respect his judgment was 
amateurish, like his other work ; he was vivid but not 
broad. His criticism, to use a metaphor, is like a 

147 



148 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

stream, rapid a,nd bright, with deep transhicent pools, 
but without navigable channels. Within certain limits 
his taste, his^ai'r, were perfect. He had a pre-eminent 
sense of quality. He was not imposed upon by volu- 
bility or even by daring. In the case of critics less 
sensitive to quality, volubility is often mistaken for 
imagination, and daring for strength. But where 
FitzGerald sympathised, he instinctively divined 
whether the artist was master of his craft, or 
whether he was only a little way ahead of his hearers. 

The one great quality which seems to have rather 
escaped FitzGerald was the quality of prodigal vigour. 
He was a critic rather of detail than of conception. 
He was fully awake to small, felicitous effects. But 
he underestimated large authors with definite manner- 
isms such as Milton, Browning, Victor Hugo, and 
Thackeray. His criticisms of Shakespeare, for in- 
stance, are dictated rather by admiration for his 
delicacies than by stupefaction at his greatness. The 
unpardonable sins to FitzGerald were uncouthness and 
slovenliness. 

The same tendency is traceable in his criticism of 
art, of music, of landscape, even of life. He tended to 
concentrate himself upon some salient point, some 
minute effect, rather than upon the general character- 
istics, the harmony of scene; as he wrote to Crabbe, 
recalling Cambridge : " Ah, I should like a drive 
over Newmarket Heath, the sun shining on the dis- 
tant leads of Ely Cathedral" ; and to W. F. Pollock, of 
Oxford : " The facade of Christ Church to the street 
(by Wren, I believe) is what most delights me ; and 
the voice of Tom in his Toioer." His mind and memory 
worked, so to speak, in vignettes. He remembered 
the day, the hour, the momentary emotion, rather than 
the period or the underlying thought. 



VII.] CRITICISM 149 

The nature of FitzGerald's appreciation of beauty 
becomes more and more apparent when we consider 
his preferences in art and music. In art he was essen- 
tially an amateur; he made no comprehensive study of 
it. But his dicta on pictures contain many subtle 
literary appreciations, enough to show that if he had 
taken up art as his life's work he could have been a 
very delicate critic. But here again we are met at 
every point by prejudices, and by the fact that, with 
FitzGerald, a prejudice once conceived was an invin- 
cible barrier to further acquaintance ; his ingenuity 
was all directed, when he had once adopted an attitude 
of hostility, to finding arguments to support his view. 
He had no idea of conquering prejudices, or of trying 
to see into the strength of a painter and the motives 
which guided him. 

He had, moreover, a strong belief in his own canons 
of criticism. He wrote to Samuel Laurence, in the first 
letter he ever addressed to him : " I suppose a visit to 
Rome, or an exact technical knowledge of pictures, is 
very essential. I am sure I can understand the finest 
part of pictures Avithout doing either." 

There was nothing progressive in FitzGerald's love 
of art ; he was content to stand in the ancient ways, 
and only too much inclined to dislike, in a perverse 
way, all signs of modern development. Just as he 
disliked the Pre-Raphaelite school of poetr}'-, he dis- 
liked the Pre-Raphaelite conception of painting. 

What he demanded in art was the wholesome, simple 
established mode of conception and execution. He 
could not put himself in a new posture, or sympathise 
with a revolutionary tendency. 

The same is the case with his appreciation of 
music, which moved him profoundly. He desired 
tranquil beauty, tenderness, simplicity; he hated all 



150 EDWxVUD FITZGERALD [chap. 

tricks, all straining after effects, all melodramatic com- 
plications. 

Thus he wrote : — 

" I grow every day more and more to love only the old God 
save the King style : the common chords, those truisms of 
music, like other truisms so little understood in the full. 
Just look at the mechanism of Robin Adair." 

All his delight was in pure, simple, massive music: 
he loved the old English composers. 

" We [Crabbe's son and daughter] with not a voice among 
us, go through Handel's Coronation Anthem! Laughable it 
may seem ; yet it is not quite so ; the things are so well 
defined, simple, and grand, that the faintest outline of them 
tells, my admiration of the old Giant grows and grows ; his 
is the music for a great, active people ! " 

We see then that both in painting and in music 
FitzGerald was on the look-out for purity and sim- 
plicity of effect. But one feels that in his artistic and 
musical criticisms he was only chronicling personal 
predilections and preferences; he gave no reasons for 
the faith that was in him. He could never disconnect 
art from life ; and thus the art which could touch the 
emotions of simple people and play a part in common 
life, by stirring the tranquil sense of beauty in normal 
minds, seemed to him a greater and more desirable 
thing than the art of those in search of remote, mys- 
tical, and incommunicable ideals. 

Here again he was dominated by the simple common- 
sense which was so strongly marked a characteristic of 
his whole nature, and which makes him on the whole 
so just and sane a critic. But just for this very 
reason he had no catholicity of taste; he could not 
sympathise with the difficult raptures, the transcendent 
realism, which raises art higher from platform to plat- 
form. The dimly apprehended secrets, the thrilling of 



Til.] CRITICISM 151 

sacred emotions, the poutifical responsibilities wliicli 
work so strongly in tlie most sensitive and esoteric 
natures, were a closed book to FitzGerald. These 
would have seemed to him mere pretentious phantoms, 
an unreal and hectic posturing, an attempt to disguise 
an egotistic discontent under an affected solemnity. 

In literary regions, FitzGerald had a considerable 
confidence in his own critical judgment. He wrote to 
Cowell : — 

"... You, I, and John Allen are among the few, I do 
say, who, having a good natural Insiglit, maintain it un- 
dimmed by public, or private. Regards." 

And again, to the same, in a sentence which com- 
memorates the extinction of FitzGerald's faint ambi- 
tions to be an original writer, and his demure acceptance 
of the critical attitude : — 

" Ten years ago I might have been vext to see you striding 
along in Sanscrit and Persian so fast ; reading so much ; 
remembering all ; writing about it so well. But now I am 
glad to see any man do any thing well ; and I know that it 
is my vocation to stand and wait, and know within myself 
whether it is done well." 

And late in life to Lowell : — 

" I am accredited with the Aphorism, ' Taste is the Femi- 
nine of Genius.' However that may be, I have some con- 
fidence in my own." 

He gives an account of the spirit in which he read, 
in early days, which shows that he demanded to 
appreciate rather than to master the spirit of a 
writer : — 

" I take pleasure in reading things I don't wholly under- 
stand; just as the old women like sermons; I think it is of a 
piece with an admiration of all Nature around us. I think 
there is a greater charm in the half meanings and glimpses of 



152 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

meaning that come in through Blake's wilder visions: though 
his difficulties arose from a very different source from Shake- 
speare's. But somewhat too much of this. I suspect I have 
found out this as an useful solution, when I am asked the 
meaning of anything that I am admiring, and don't know it." 

But, as has been said, FitzGerald was always a critic 
of detail and form, rather than a critic of tendencies 
and currents in literature. It will therefore be con- 
venient to give some of his more detailed views, for it 
is in these rather than in general judgments that his 
strength lay. He had in the first place a great devotion 
to the Greek and Latin Classics. We find him read- 
ing Homer, ^schylus, Thucydides, Plutarch, Pindar, 
Xenophon, Menander, and Herodotus. On several of 
these authors he made characteristic comments. He 
thought Plutarch, he says, " such a gentleman." He 
took up Thucydides, and soon found himself reading it 
"like a novel." But of all Classical authors he put 
Sophocles far the first, reading him repeatedly. 
Euripides he tried, but found his subtlety and doctrin- 
aire morality intolerable. For Homer's Iliad, " with 
its brutal Gods and Heroes," he could not care. Of 
^schylus and Sophocles he writes : — 

" Sophocles is a pure Greek temple ; but ^schylus is a 
rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: 
and which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one 
will have ^schylus too a work of man, I say he is like a 
Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the 
genius of man aspiring up to the immeasurable, and reaching 
after the infinite in complexity and gloom, according as 
Christianity elevated and widened men's minds. . . . Besides 
these J^ischyluses trouble us with their grandeur and gloom ; 
but Sophocles is always soothing, complete, and satisfactory." 

In this connection it is interesting to note that 
he often implored Tennyson to translate a play of 



VII.] CRITICISM 153 

Sophocles. " Every great poet," he used to say, 
"owes this as a duty to his predecessors." 

In Latin he read Tacitus, Juvenal, Lucretius, Seneca, 
and most of all Virgil, who made his eyes wet, as he 
says, and whom he loved. Horace he never really 
cared for. " Why is it," he wrote, " that I can never 
take up with Horace — so sensible, agreeable, elegant, 
and sometimes even grand ? " 

Even with an author like Virgil, whom he devotedly 
loved, he can lay his finger on the one defect, namely, 
the disproportion of ornament to conception of subject. 
But it is clear from his preference of Virgil to Catullus, 
that he was always inclined to value tenderness more 
highly than passion. 

" I have also been visiting dear old Virgil : his Georgics 
and the sixth and eighth books of the jEneid. I could now 
take them up and read them both again. Pray look at lines 
407-415 of Book viii. — the poor Matron kindling her early 
fire — so Georgic ! so Virgilian ! so unsuited, or dispropor- 
tionate, to the Thing it illustrates." 

Of Lucretius he wrote : — 

"... I have been regaling myself, in my unscholarly way, 
with Mr. Munro's admirable Lucretius. ... I venerate the 
earnestness of the man, and the power with which he makes 
some music even from his hardest Atoms. ... I forget if 
Lucretius is in Dante ; he should have been the Guide thro' 
Hell ; but perhaps he was too deep in it to get out for a 
Holiday." 

And the following extract on Seneca is full of 
originality : — 

" I wonder whether old Seneca was indeed such a humbug 
as people now say he was : he is really a fine writer. About 
three liundred years ago, or less, our divines and writers 
called him the divine Seneca ; and old Bacon is full of him. 
One sees in him the upshot of all the Greek philosophy, how 



154 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

it stood in Nero's time, when the Gods had worn out a great 
deal. I don't think old Seneca believed he should live again. 
Death is his great resource. Think of the rocococity of a 
gentleman studying Seneca in the middle of February 1844: 
in a remarkably damp cottage." 

Id English FitzGerald read, especially in his first 
youth, the early balladists and lyrists. He speaks of 
H. Vatighan, Wotton, Carew, Lily, with high praise — ■ 
"very English and very pleasant." 

In poetry generally he was hard to please ; he 
revelled in Shakespeare, both sonnets and plays, but 
he disliked Milton and Spenser; he admired Dryden, 
especially as a prose writer ; Cowper and Pope he 
called men of genius, but out of his sphere. Gray he 
ranked very high. Wordsworth he loved, but he sel- 
dom mentions him without some touch of irritation 
at his pomposity. Of moderns the three Tennysons, 
Alfred, Erederic, and Charles ; but of most contemporary 
poetry he spoke in terms of great contempt ; he said, 
for instance, of a poetical friend, " He talks of pub- 
lishing a popular edition of his poems : he means a 
cheap one." 

In English prose he read at one time a good deal 
of the older divines, Barrow, Jeremy Taylor, South, 
and Warburton. He admired Burton's Anatomy of 
Melancholy ; he loved both Fielding and Richardson, 
preferring the latter. He called Clarissa Harloive 
" wonderful and aggravating " and often desired to 
make an abbreviation of it. He admired Burke. He 
was fond of the S^^ectator, smd thought at one time of 
making a little book out of the Roger de Coverley 
essays. It is surprising from all points of view that 
he did not care for Jane Austen. He loved an old 
book like Harrington's Oceana, the kind of large, quiet 
book that you find in an old country-house. He was 



VII.] CRITICISM 155 

fond of big, leisurely biographies such as Boswell's 
Johnson and the Life and Journals of John Wesley. He 
enjoyed Horace Walpole's and Cowper's letters and 
admired Sheridan. He read a little of philosophy, 
such as Spinoza, but his mind turned more to the 
definite and personal ; he said once that he wished we 
had more diaries of unknown men. 

Of purely modern literature he read little. He was 
very fond of Newman, both the Apologia and the 
Sermons. He read the Life of Arnold with interest. 
Of modern novels he read both Dickens and Thackeray 
with critical admiration ; and he was fond of both 
Wilkie Collins and Trollope ; but he never appre- 
ciated George Eliot. Indeed he loved romances 
rather than novels. He was fond of reading George 
Borrow, but complained of his lapses into vulgarities 
of expression. He read Emerson, but found him 
misty and intangible ; he thought Hawthorne a genius, 
but " not altogether to his taste." Carlyle he criticised 
harshly enough in early days. " Carlyle raves and 
foams, but he has nothing to propose " ; but after 
making his acquaintance he began to feel differently. 
" There is a bottom of truth in his wildest rhapsodies," 
he wrote. 

It speaks well for FitzGerald's critical acumen that 
he discovered Blake for himself in 1833 and wrote of 
him with bewildered admiration. 

As to his Oriental studies, there is a recorded com- 
ment which casts a curious light upon his taste for them. 
" When I look into Homer, Dante, Virgil, ^schylus, 
Shakespeare," he said, " those Orientals look silly." 

I have thought it well to collect these scattered 
preferences, because they illustrate the nature of Fitz- 
Gerald's critical judgment. It will be seen that it 
is essentially whimsical ; he touched literature at 



156 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

many points, but there is no catholicity of view. He 
is like a man walking in a garden of flowers, attracted 
here by a perfume, there by a colour, and, with an 
almost childlike pettishness, refusing to look at any- 
thing except what happens to strike his fastidious 
perception. His individuality is his only guide. 

The charm of his literary criticisms is that they 
come out so simply, in a kind of fireside ease, from a 
man who has read books because he loved them, with- 
out any pontifical solemnity — and yet they are as true 
and penetrating as those of Charles Lamb himself : he 
began to criticise early. He writes in 1832 : — 

"... Shakespeare's (sonnets) are perfectly simple, and 
have the very essence of tenderness . . . they seem all stuck 
about my heart, like the ballads that used to be on the walls 
of London." 

He could never bring himself really to care for 
Milton ; he wrote : — 

" Then Milton ; I don't think I've read him these forty 
years ; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and certain Parts of 
it, looming as grand as anything in my Memory ; but I never 
could read ten lines together without stumbling at some 
Pedantry that tipped me at once out of Paradise, or even 
Hell, into the Schoolroom, worse than either. Tennyson 
again used to say that the two grandest of all Similes were 
those of the Ships hanging in the Air, and ' the Gunpowder 
one,' which he used slowly and grimly to enact, in the Days 
that are no more. He certainly then thought Milton the 
sublimest of all the Gang ; his Diction modelled on Virgil, 
as perhaps Dante's." 

The following is an interesting appreciation of 
Dryden's prose, written to Lowell : — 

" As in the case of your Essays, I don't pretend to say 
which is finest : but I think that to me Dryden's Prose, qunad 
Prose, is the finest Style of all. So Gray, I believe, thought : 



VII.] CRITICISM 157 

that mail of Taste, very far removed, perhaps as far as 
feminine from masculine, from the Man he admired." 

What could be more penetrating than the following 
criticism of Walpole's letters, written, it must be re- 
membered, to a girl : — 

"... You spoke once of even trying Walpole's Letters : 
capital as they are to me, I can't be sure they would much 
interest, even if they did not rather disgust, you : the Man 
and his Times are such as you might not care for at all, 
though there are such men as his, and such Times too, in the 
world. . . . N.B. — It is not gross or coarse : but you would 
not like the man, so satirical, selfish, and frivolous, you would 
think. But I think I could show you that he had a very 
loving Heart for a few, and a very firm, just, understanding 
under all his Wit and Fun. Even Carlyle has admitted that 
he was about the clearest-sighted Man of his time." 

His criticisms of Gray are very delicate : — 

" As to Gray — Ah, to think of that little Elegy inscribed 

among the Stars, while , & Co. are blazing away 

with their Fireworks here below. I always think that there is 
more Genius in most of the three volume Novels than in Gray : 
but by the most exquisite Taste, and indefatigable lubrication, 
he made of his own few thoughts, and many of other men's, 
a something which we all love to keep ever about us. I do 
not think his scarcity of work was from Design : he had but 
a lid;le to say, I believe, and took his time to say it. . . ." 

Keats he greatly admired; he wrote to Mrs. 
Kemble : — 

" Talking of Keats, do not forget to read Lord Houghton's 
Life and Letters of him : in which you will find what you 
may not have guessed from his Poetry (though almost un- 
fathomably deep in that also), the strong, masculine. Sense 
and Humour, etc., of the man : more akin to Shakespeare, I 
am tempted to think, in a perfect circle of Poetic Faculties, 
than any Poet since." 

A figure in English literature for whom KtzGerald 



158 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

had a special tenderness and sympathy was Charles 
Lamb ; he wrote : — 

" We have also Memoirs of Godwin, very dry, I think ; in- 
deed with very little M^ortli reading, except two or three Let- 
ters of dear Charles Lamb, ' Saint Charles,' as Thackeray once 
called him, while looking at one of his half-mad Letters, and 
remember [ing] his Devotion to that quite mad Sister. I must 
say I think his Letters infinitely better than his Essays; and 
Patmore^ says his conversation, when just enough animated 
by Gin and Water, was better than either, which I believe 
too. Procter said he was far beyond the Coleridges, Words- 
worths, Southeys, etc. And I am afraid I believe that also." 

FitzGerald grew to love Charles Lamb more and 
more as life went on, just as he grew to love Words- 
worth less. 

The following is a youthful criticism in the earlier 
and more deliberate manner, with the slightest 
possible affectation of simplicity; but none the less 
perspicacious : — 

" I have been poring over Wordsworth lately : which has 
had much effect in bettering my Blue Devils : for his philo- 
sophy does not abjure melancholy, but puts a pleasant counten- 
ance upon it, and connects it with humanity. It is very well, 
if the sensibility that makes us fearful of ourselves is diverted 
to become a cause of sympathy and interest with Nature and 
mankind : and this I think Wordsworth tends to do." 

Later on FitzGerald's view of WordsAvorth was 
much modified. He never ceased to admire the sober 
majesty, the grave tranquillity, of the best work; but 
the more he knew of the man and his nature, the more 
was he irritated and perplexed by the affectation, the 
deliberate solemnity, the pose, of the poet who had set 
out in quest of directness and simplicity. The truth 
which perhaps FitzGerald did not quite comprehend, is 

1 Peter George Patmore (1786-1855), father of the poet Coventry 
Pati:aore. 



viT.] CRITICISM 159 

that Wordsworth was not only a man and a poet ; the 
instinct of the teacher lay in the very marrow of his 
bones; and in proportion as the impulse of the poet 
died away, the impulse of the teacher emerged. 
Wordsworth fell into the lamentable error, character- 
istic of earnest-minded men without humour, of taking 
himself too seriously and overestimating the value of 
his own influence. FitzGerald felt the poet's attitude 
to be both pretentious and grotesque ; and therefore, 
though he could not help venerating him, it delighted 
him to poke fun at the rather self-conscious prophet. 

FitzGerald worshipped Scott, read and re-read him 
in the days of strong sight ; and in the days of clouded 
vision had the novels read to him. Scott opened a 
door to him into an enchanted world, not the dreary, 
familiar world he knew so well and was often so 
wearied of, but into a brave, bright country of fair 
ladies and shrewd crones, of freebooters and knights 
and gallant gentlemen. As life went on and Fitz- 
Gerald grew old he used to say that the thought, that 
the particular novel of Scott's which was being read to 
him he might never hear again, threw a little cloud of 
sadness over his mind. Scott's defects as a writer 
seemed to FitzGerald to float like straws on a river 
deep and wide. 

He wrote to W. F. Pollock : — 

"... The Pirate is, I know, not one of Scott's best : the 
Women, Minna, Breuda, Noma, are poor theatrical figures. 
But Magnus and Jack Bunce and Claud Halcro (though the 
latter rather wearisome) are substantial enough : how whole- 
somely they swear ! and no one ever thinks of blaming Scott 
for it. There is a passage where the Company at Burgh 
Westra are summoned by Magnus to go down to the Shore 
to see the Boats go off to the Deep Sea fishing, and ' they 
followed his stately step to the Shore as the Herd of Deer 



160 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

follows the leading Stag, with all manner of respectful 
Observance.' This, coming in at the close of the preceding 
unaffected Narrative, is to me like Homer, whom Scott really 
resembles in the simplicity and ease of his Story. ... I 
finished the Book with Sadness; thinking I might never 
read it again. . . ." 

In 1874, though by that time averse to leaving 
home, he paid a pious pilgrimage to Abbotsford. The 
following is his account of it : — 

" But I did get to Abbotsford, and was rejoiced to find 
it was not at all Cockney, not a Castle, but only in the half- 
castellated style of heaps of other houses in Scotland ; the 
Grounds simply and broadly laid out before the windows, 
down to a field, down to the Tweed, with the woods which he 
left so little, now well aloft and flourishing, and I was glad. 
I could not find my way to Maida's Grave in the Garden, 
with its false quantity, 

" ' Ad januam Domini, etc.,' 

which the Whigs and Critics taunted Scott with, and Lock- 
hart had done it. ' You know I don't care a curse about 
what I write ' ; nor about what was imputed to him. In this, 
surely like Shakespeare : as also in other respects. I will 
worship him, in spite of Gurlyle, who sent me an ugly 
Autotype of Knox whom I was to worship instead. 

" Then I went to see Jedburgh ^ Abbey, in a half -ruined 
corner of which he lies entombed — Lockhart beside him — 
a beautiful place, with his own Tweed still running close by, 
and his Eildon Hills looking on. The man who drove me 
about showed me a hill which Sir Walter was very fond of 
visiting, from which he could see over the Border, etc. This 
hill is between Abbotsford and Jedburgh ^ : and when his 
Coach horses, who drew his Hearse, got there, to that hill, 
they could scarce be got on." 

The last touch, the pathos of the incident, is just the 
sort of thing that went straight to FitzGerald's heart. 
He could not forbear to give Carlyle an account of the 

1 A slip for Dryburgh. 



VII.] CRITICISM 161 

pilgrimage, adding : " Oh, I know you think Scott a 
brave, honest, good-natured man, and a good Story- 
teller, only not a Hero at all. And I can't help know- 
ing and loving him as such." 

Dickens, too, held a high place in FitzGerald's heart. 
He felt very strongly the vital force of Dickens as a 
creator, the way in which, as by the waving of a wand, 
he could make an incident live and breathe. 

Thus he wrote : — 

" The intended Pathos is, as usiial, missed : but just turn 
to Little Dombey's Funeral, where the Acrobat in the Street 
suspends his performance till the Funeral has passed, and his 
Wife wonders if the little Acrobat in her Arms will so far 
outlive the little boy in the Hearse as to wear a Ribbon 
through his hair, following his Father's Calling. It is in 
such Side-touches, you know, that Dickens is inspired to 
Create like a little God Almighty." 

He hardly knew Dickens personally ; biit it was a 
great joy to him to read Forster's Life, and to find not 
only a magician and a story-teller, but a man, who, 
whatever were his faults, was full to the brim of 
generosity and human affection. 

For Browning he had the most limited sympathy. 
His dislike of the coarseness of workmanship, the 
deliberate grotesqueness of phrase, the tendency to 
kick up the heels and gambol about in sheer zest of 
living, blinded FitzGerald, one must suppose, to the 
tenderness, the amazing range, of the man's humanity. 
He wrote to Frederic Tennyson : — 

" I see your old friend Browning is in the field again, with 
another of his odd titles : De Saisiez — or Croisic — or some 
such name. I tried to read his Dramatic Lyrics again : they 
seemed to me Ingoldsby Legends." 

In Italian he read and loved Dante and Boccaccio ; 
but could not care for Tasso or Ariosto. In Spanish, 



162 EDWAUD FITZGERALD [chap. 

though he spent so much time and pains over Calderon, 
yet he put Don Quixote almost at the head of all his 
books, loving, as he said, even the Dictionary in which 
he looked out the words. 

In French he often read Montaigne, and almost 
adored Madame de Sevigne's letters. He took plea- 
sure in Beranger, and in Sainte-Beuve ; Victor Hugo 
he did not care for, or the Eomantic school generally. 

He was never really in sympathy with French litera- 
ture ; he desired above all things simplicity, directness, 
homeliness, on the one hand, and sublimity, grandeur, 
largeness, on the other. But all finesse, affectation, 
prettiness, and elegant trifling were against his taste. 

Thus he wrote, comparing ancient and modern 
French poetry : — 

" I never imderstand why the old French Poetry is to my 
Palate, while the modern is not. Partly, no doubt, because 
of his naivete, which is lost from educated Frenchmen." 

And his deliberate judgments on French literature are 
prejudiced by the same feeling : — 

" So it is with nearly all French things ; there is a clever, 
showy surface ; but no Holy of Holies far withdrawn ; con- 
ceived in the depth of a mind, and only to be received into 
the depth of ours after much attention." 

And of Gil Bias : — 

" I have failed in another attempt at Gil Bias. I believe 
I see its easy Grace, humour, etc. But it is (like La Fontaine) 
too thin a Wine for me : all sparkling with little adventures, 
but no one to care about ; no Colour, no Breadth, like my 
dear Don ; whom I shall resort to forthwith." 

With Germany and German literature he had no 
sympathy at all. He profoundly disliked the tendency 
to aesthetic philosophising, and awkward gush, which 
he believed to characterise the Teutonic spirit : — 



VII.] CRITICISM 163 

" Then there's an account of Ilallam's Literature, with a 
deal about ^Esthetics in it. Oh, Pollock ! let you and I 
and Spedding stand out against these damnable German 
humbugs." 

From the above it is easy to deduce FitzGerald's 
literary taste. He was indolent and eclectic ; he can 
liardly be called a very wide reader ; he was not like 
Macaiday, an omnivorous gorger upon books ; such an 
appetite indeed as Macaulay indulged in reading is of 
the nature of intellectual gluttony. It is a symptom 
of a restlessness of brain, and reading becomes a mere 
habit, a kind of mental sedative like smoking or card- 
playing, or the occupations with which men of active 
minds ward off the approaches of ennui. FitzGerald 
had none of this kind of restlessness ; he was essen- 
tially a spectatorial and meditative man; his reading 
was not merely to satiate a craving, but a contempla- 
tive process ; with, bis deficiency of intellectual initia- 
tive, be used the authors whom be read somewhat 
like beaters, to start game in the coverts of bis own 
mind; he did not devour, he sipped and tasted, the 
book serving often as a mere text which gave bis own 
languid fancy material for dreams ; he was not an 
absorbed reader, but a leisurely one ; mind and eye 
alike would desert the page, and the dream-pictures 
would come crowding before the inner sense. The 
omnivorous reader wins delight from throwing bimself 
into the author's mind ; be is like a man who wanders 
in a strange bouse alone, paces the galleries as in the 
palace of art, feeds upon what be sees without ques- 
tioning or analysing. But it was far otherwise with 
FitzGerald. He was by instinct a connoisseur ; he ap- 
praised, distinguished, weighed. He liked to stand by, 
as he said, and know within himself whether the tiling 
was well done, as a man might stand to watch a game. 



164 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

Then, too, his taste was all for the detailed, the 
personal, the precise. He loved the stuff out of which 
life is made, the pathos, the humour, the beauty and 
sorrow of the world. There are very few allusions 
to history or to current politics in his letters ; there 
is a kind of lofty and emotional patriotism, a tender 
love for the land he lived in ; but here again he grew 
with advancing years, like most shy, inactive men, a 
pessimist; he thought with sorrow that England was 
coarsening and growing debilitated ; and this because 
he was not himself in the forefront of the battle, and 
because such generous ideals as he had nursed in his 
youth were growing faded, giving place in the ardent 
minds of the rising generation to other ideals, not 
less generous, but which to FitzGerald were simplj'- 
unfamiliar. 

The same process took place in his literary taste ; 
he acted on the principle which Charles Lamb enunci- 
ated, that whenever a new book came out he read an 
old one. There was nothing progressive about Fitz- 
Gerald's taste ; he thought and wrote contemptuously 
of modern books. He had not the energy to follow 
the new movements ; his sun set early ; and the latter 
part of his life was lived in a remembered light. And 
to such an extent did his feeling of personality affect 
his critical judgment that it was said of him humor- 
ously that he never really approved of his friends' 
writings unless he had seen them in manuscript. 

But with all his limitations, and they were many 
and obvious, it still remains true of FitzGerald that he 
was one of those, who are even fewer than we are apt 
to think, who have loved high literature with a real 
instinctive and passionate joy. Even men whose 
delight in literature is true and deep are apt to find 
these masterpieces austere and even dreary, to breathe 



Til.] CRITICISM 165 

with difficulty in the serene air. Many of us who 
love great literature can only take it in small doses — 
otherwise it becomes ineffective and unmeaning, like a 
liturgical passage where familiarity veils the beauty, 
which yet in a moment of insight flashes upon us in all 
its primal awe. But FitzGerald could drink, day after 
day, deep draughts from the pure fount, and never 
slake his thirst. 

His selection of Sophocles as probably the most 
perfect of writers is characteristic of him. FitzGerald 
was in complete harmony with that gracious and 
untroubled spirit — 

" eijKo\os fJL^p ev0a5 , eijKoXos 5' ^Ke?," 

who loved life and beauty, and yet stood apart, un- 
touched by the fever and the dust of life, watching 
humanity from some serener place, lovingly and gen- 
erously, but yet remotely, as a man may look down 
into the streets from some high tower, and see the 
house-roofs and the gardens, and with a kind of pity 
the busy little figures hurrying to and fro. 

FitzGerald indeed did not attain to that tranquil 
standpoint ; he was too deeply concerned, and depended 
too much on others for that. He hungered and 
thirsted for love ; and for the sweetness which evaded 
his grasp. Yet in his patience, his dignity, his un- 
worldliness, his clear eye for beauty, he Lad much in 
common with the serene tragedian who could look so 
unflinchingly into the darkest places of the human 
soul and present, as in the CEdip}is, the spectacle of 
one, involved in the most poignant miseries that can 
befall a man, deprived of all that can make life 
tolerable, yet in that grim descent, surrounded by 
all the most hideous and shapeless forms of woe unut- 
terable, never losing an indomitable dignity of soul. 



166 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. vii. 

It was to that dignity that FitzGerald dung with all 
his might; and although in his sheltered and un- 
eventful life there was little room for tragedy on an 
august scale, yet he faced the sorrow which lies plen- 
tifully in wait for the sensitive spirit Avith a quietude 
that was philosophical though never stoical. 

FitzGerald never fell into the error so natural to 
secluded men of taste, of mistaking literature and art, 
the reflections of life, for life itself. He did not, like 
the Lady of Shalott, live in a self-made paradise ; he 
was forever on the road, mixing in his shy way with 
mankind ; and it is this which makes his letters, and 
his Omar — which are the abiding fruit of his genius 
— so great, because they never lost hold of realities, 
because he worked in the spirit of nature with the 
invisible hand of art. Intellect with FitzGerald 
always served emotion. He felt first what he after- 
wards expressed; the emotion never lagged behind 
the expression; and it is that, after all, which differ- 
entiates artists, and makes them worthy to move in 
the procession, 

" Where none is first or last." 



CHAPTER VIII 

HABITS CHARACTER 

FitzGerald's habits were absolutely simple ; his only- 
plan of action was to do what he liked, and not be 
bothered. In earlier years he had rambled further 
afield; but in the quiet days at Woodbridge or 
Lowestoft, he would spend the morning over books 
and papers, or write a leisurely letter ; he would stroll 
about, looking at flowers and trees, listening to the 
voices of birds, talking to his simple acquaintances. 
Sometimes he would go out in his boat, and gossip 
with the boatmen. He seems to have had no fixed 
times for work, but took it up when it pleased his 
fancy. His books lay all about him in confusion ; he 
had not a large library — some thousand volumes — 
and he was fond of pulling out leaves which he thought 
otiose. Sometimes, if the fancy took him, he would 
call on a neighbour ; when he came home in the after- 
noon he would play his organ or sing to himself. Then 
he would go to his books again, and, before his eye- 
sight failed, would read or write ; smoke a pipe, and 
go to bed. All definite engagements he abhorred ; he 
had the nervous and irritable temperament that finds 
the chatter of irresponsible people distracting and 
annoying ; as he wrote to Mrs. Cowell : — 

" I was all yesterday taking a small Party on the River, and 
am to-day about to do the same. Tliese little things tire me 
more than you would think possible : really, I believe, from 

167 



168 EDWAEU FITZGERALD [chap. 

the talking and hearing talk all day, which is so unlike my 
way of Life. But I am too selfish already in keeping my 
little Ship to myself." 

lu the early days of FitzGerald's eremitical life lie 
made experiments in diet, and gradually settled down 
into vegetarianism. He felt at first a loss of physical 
power, but this passed off, and he believed he gained 
in lightness of spirit. He lived practically on bread and 
fruit, mostly apples and pears — even a turnip — with 
sometimes cheese, or butter, and milk puddings. But 
he was not a bigoted vegetarian. To avoid an appear- 
ance of singularity he would eat meat at other houses, 
and provided it in plenty for his guests. But the only 
social meal he cared to join in was " tea, pure and 
simple, with bread and butter." He was abstemious, 
but not a teetotaller ; and was a moderate smoker, 
using clean clay pipes, which he broke in pieces when 
he had smoked them once. Like all solitary men, he 
got more and more attached to his own habits, and it 
became every year more difficult for him to conform to 
any other mode of life. 

We have a curious account from one of his boy- 
readers of the way in which FitzGerald, in the days of 
weak sight, spent his evenings. The boy was engaged 
to read for two hours, from 7.30 to 9.30. This par- 
ticular reader was so punctual that FitzGerald used to 
call him " the ghost," because he could be depended 
upon to make a silent and precise entrance exactly 
when he was expected. Magazines and current journals 
were read first ; at the time of the Tichborne Trial, 
for instance, the proceedings of each day were gone 
through in detail. Then followed a simple supper. 
Then a novel, or some book like Boswell's Johnson or 
Pepys' Diary would be embarked upon. FitzGerald's 
temper was a little uncertain. He would apply hard 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 169 

words to both reader and author. If he was bored, 

he Avoukl fidget and say, " Oh, pass that d d rot ! " 

If he was unusually hard on the reader, he would 
apologise afterwards or even proffer a small tip, which 
he called " insulting the boy in a pecuniary manner." 

FitzGerald himself sat on a low chair with his feet 
on the fender, in dressing-gown and slippers. He 
invariably wore his tall hat, only removing it occasion- 
ally to get a red silk handkerchief out of it. He would 
hold his snuff-box in his hand, or a paper-knife ; if he 
was interested he would sit silent, stroking his beard 
with the paper-knife ; if he was not interested he 
would make endless interruptions. 

FitzGerald's pleasures and preferences were of the 
simplest kind. He had an almost childish delight in 
bright colours, a thing which is said to be rare in 
light-eyed men. His favourite flowers were the nas- 
turtium, the geranium, the convolvulus — " the morning 
glory " — with its purple or white trumpets, the mari- 
gold, not only for its bold hues, but for its courage in 
living the winter through. He loved the garish tints 
of bright curtains and carpets, the plumage of gay 
birds, cocks and pheasants, the splendours of butter- 
flies and moths, anything that could warm and invig- 
orate the eye and heart. 

Thus he speaks of looking from the river on the 
crops, "as they grow green, yellow, russet, and are 
finally carried away in the red and blue waggons with 
the sorrel horse." A parti-coloured mop that he had 
bought for household purposes was so pleasing a fount 
of colour that it stood for years in his room. He had 
the same delight in sweet, cheerful, and tunable sounds. 
He liked the crowing of cocks, the notes of brisk 
birds. Of the blackbird he said that its song 
"seemed so jolly and the note so proper from that 



170 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

golden bill of his." The nightingale he cared for less, 
saying whimsically that at the time she chose to dis- 
course she "ought to be in bed like the rest of us." 
He liked the sound of bells, the wind in the trees, the 
rattle of ropes, the sharp hiss of moving seas. In 
all of these things he had the perception of quality, of 
essence, of individuality, clearly defined. 

FitzGerald was photographed in 1873, when he was 
nearly sixty-four, by Messrs. Cade and White of 
Ipswich. He named one of the two portraits taken, 
the " philosopher" portrait, and the other the " states- 
man " portrait. In both, the high domed forehead is 
quite bald, and the hair grows long and limp over his 
collar. He has thin whiskers. Both the pictures 
have an expression of fatigue. The " philosopher's " 
eyes are cast down ; but in the " statesman " portrait 
they are upturned, and have a dim, sunken look ; the 
eyelids are half-shut, testifying to weakness of sight. 
The cheeks are somewhat hollow; the nose finely 
cut and inclined to aquiline ; the broad, mobile mouth, 
with its big lips, is much depressed at the corners, 
giving the face a wistful and regretful look. There 
is a strongly marked dimple in the chin. It is a 
somewhat indolent face, and has an expression of 
vague trouble — not the face of a successful or even of 
a contented man. Some allowance must no doubt 
be made for the fact that to be photographed was 
obviously a trying ordeal to FitzGerald; but a life- 
history is written legibly upon it. We can see the 
dreamer of dreams, the sad dignity of one who saw 
clearly and without illusion the dark background of 
life. It is the face of one with great intellectual 
power, but dogged by a deep-seated irresolution and 
conscious of a certain failure of aim. But it has 
too a very sweet and tender look, the look of one who 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 171 

has loved mucli, and whom sufEermg has not made 
either cold or hard, though he has found the world 
too strong. 

Such was FitzGerald near at hand. To those who 
saw him abroad, he appeared a tall, dreamy-looking 
man, blue-eyed, with large, sensitive lips, and a melan- 
choly expression ; his face tanned with exposure to the 
sun ; moving his head as he walked, with a remote, 
almost a haughty air, as though he guarded his OAvn 
secret; strong and active from much exercise, yet 
irresolute in his movements ; with straggling grey 
hair, and slovenly in dress, wearing an ancient, bat- 
tered, black-banded, shiny-edged tall hat, round which 
he would in windy weather tie a handkerchief to keep 
it in its place ; his clothes of baggy blue cloth, as though 
he were a seafarer, his trousers short and his shoes 
low, exhibiting a length of white or grey stockings. 
With an unstarched white shirt-front, high, crumpled 
stand-up collars, a big, black silk tie in a careless 
bow; in cold weather trailing a green and black or 
grey plaid shawl ; in hot weather even walking bare- 
foot, with his boots slung to a stick. He never carried 
an umbrella except in the heaviest rain. Such was 
the inconsequent appearance presented by FitzGerald 
at the age of sixty. But it must be remembered that 
this costume was not so strange in the sixties as it 
would be at the present day. Indeed, its strangeness 
then principally consisted in the fact that it was an 
unusual combination of formality and informality. 

Everything about him bore the mark of strong 
unconventional ity ; and it is strange how men who love 
their own ways, and desire to live in the world rather as 
ghosts than men, so often fail to understand that con- 
formity to conventional usage is often the best and 
safest disguise. 



172 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

But FitzGerald liad a radical abliorrence of conven- 
tional tilings ; he was impatient of the least hint of 
tyranny ; it was characteristic of him that on returning 
from a cruise in the Deben, he could not wait till the 
boat drew to land, but would generally step out in 
shallow water, wetting himself to the knees. There 
ran indeed through all his habits a certain want of self- 
control that is of the nature of madness — the madness 
that he so often claimed as the inheritance of his 
family — a species of childish surrender to the whim 
of the moment, an absence of self-command. 

His relations with other people are characterised by 
the same whimsical self-will. FitzGerald had an extra- 
ordinary fund of sentiment in his nature ; " his friend- 
ships," as he said of himself, "were more like loves." 
He was not only affectionate, he was deeply and 
devotedly loyal to his friends. Though he lost sight, 
to a great extent, of the comrades of his youth, because 
he could not bring himself to be a guest in any house 
where he was not absolutely unmolested and able to 
follow his own whims, yet he managed by his letters 
to keep the bond drawn close. Both Thackeray and 
Tennyson declared that they loved FitzGerald best of 
all their friends ; even Carlyle, with all his enthusiasm 
for action, kept a very warm corner in his heart for 
FitzGerald. But this sentiment had in FitzGerald's 
ease a weaker side. He was always taking fancies, and 
once under the spell, he could see no faults in his 
friend. His friendship for Browne rose out of one of 
these romantic impulses ; so too his affection for Posh, 
the boatman; for Cowell, and for Alfred Smith the 
farmer of Farlingay and Boulge, who had been his 
protege as a boy. He seems, too, to have been one of 
those whose best friendships are reserved for men ; for 
though he had beloved women friends like Mrs. Cowell 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 173 

and Mrs. Kernble, yet these are the exceptions rather 
than the rule. The truth is that there was a strong 
admixture of the feminine in FitzGerald's character. 
As a rule the friendships of men are equal, unromantic 
comradeships, which take no account of such physical 
things as face and gesture and voice. But FitzGerald 
had again an almost feminine observation of personal 
characteristics. Browne's wholesome, manly beauty, 
the comeliness of Alfred Smith, the strength and 
vigour of Posh, the splendid majesty of Tennyson, the 
sweet-tempered smile of Cowell — all these played their 
part in determining the devotion of FitzGerald. 

But even so his relations to his friends had the less 
attractive elements, such as the contradictory pettish- 
ness which he lavished on Browne, the disagreeable 
and cutting things which he said to him, to be followed 
by a tearful repentance ; the curious sense of irritable 
dignity which used to transpose him in a moment into 
a formidable and fastidious gentleman — all these are 
referable to the same feminine characteristics, the 
desire to dominate a situation, to show a momentary 
power at whatever cost. He could be perfectly easy 
and familiar with unaffected people ; he could sit, 
chat, smoke, take his meals, with boatmen, farmers, 
and tradespeople. But he was thoroughly uncertain 
and capricious in his behaviour. He could thank a 
stranger with almost exaggerated gratitude for a little 
service done him, and he could at the same time say 
to a Woodbridge neighbour who greeted him with a 
genial Good-morning, " I don't know you ! " because 
they had never been formally introduced. When the 
rector of Woodbridge visited him and said, " I am 
sorry, Mr. FitzGerald, that I never see you at church," 
he could reply with Johnsonian rotundity, " Sir, you 
might have conceived that a man has not come to my 



174 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

years without thinking much on those things. I believe 
I may say that I have reflected on them fully. You 
need not repeat this visit." Again, he could torment 
even his beloved sailor-folk in the same way. John 
Green of Akleburgh, a boatman, said that on one 
occasion he had shown himself very attentive to 
FitzGerald, doing this and that without orders. 

" I suppose you think you've got the Prince of Wales 
here," said FitzGerald. The next time that they were 
together. Green held back. " I suppose I'm not worth 
waiting on," said FitzGerald. 

Though much annoyed by any discourtesy shown 
him by others, he was by no means invariably cour- 
teous himself. He invited a bookseller, Mr. Read of 
Woodbridge, whose shop he often visited, to dinner 
on one occasion. Mr. Read appeared at the appointed 
time, and was sturdily refused admittance. He re- 
monstrated in vain, and finally returned home in 
considerable vexation. On the following day he 
received a note from FitzGerald which did not mend 
matters. "I saw you yesterday when you called," 
FitzGerald wrote, " but I was not fit for company, 
and felt that I could not be bothered." 

He was capable of administering a humorous rebuke, 
if necessary. On one occasion, in early life, he was 
present at a gathering of friends ; one of the company, 
who was fond of titled society, aired his acquaintance 
with people of importance, and told pointless anecdotes 
of distinguished friends. FitzGerald listened with an 
appearance of deep melancholy, and finally rose to his 
feet ; he lighted a bedroom candle, and at the door, 
standing candle in hand, with a look of hopeless dejec- 
tion, said, " I once knew a lord, too, but he is dead." 

For all his philosophy, he was very quick to resent 
the smallest familiarity which he felt to be undue ; 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 175 

indeed a fondness for making people uncomfortable is 
characteristic of rather childish natures, who above all 
things desire to make themselves felt. 

He was always impatient of being interfered with 
when his thoughts were occupied ; one evening when 
his boy was reading to him, FitzGerald pottered about, 
turning over books and papers, searching for some- 
thing. The boy offered his help to look for the missing 
object ; FitzGerald refused the proffered assistance, 
adding pettishly, "That is just about the way I shall 
get to heaven, I suppose, searching for what I cannot 
find." 

When he was walking along the road or the street 
with a companion he would get so much absorbed in 
his own thoughts that if he was addressed he would 
answer in a querulous voice as though annoyed by 
impertinent interruptions. His husky voice, with 
a curious deflection of tone at the end of his 
sentences, was highly characteristic. "He used to 
speak," said Mowbray Donne, " like a cricket ball with 
a break in it," or " like a wave falling over — a Suffolk 
wave." This inaccessibility, accompanied by a good 
deal of hmiteur of manner, was even displayed to his 
nearest friends. Miss Crabbe said of him that he was a 
distant and punctilious man ; " I think," she said, " we 
all stood in awe of him, and my impression was that 
he was a proud man ; and, like many proud people, 
didn't mind at all doing things that many people 
wouldn't do, such as carrying his boots to be mended." 
She adds that he never seemed light-hearted, but always 
oppressed wdth a kind of brooding melancholy. 

Though self-indulgent himself in many ways, he dis- 
liked any apparent grossness of enjoyment in others. 
" He had a vein," wrote Cowell, " of strong scorn of 
all self-indulgence in him." When an acquaintance 



176 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

who had been having a glass of wine in his company 
left the room, MtzGerald said, with an air of great 
disgust, " Did you notice how he took up his glass ? 
I am sure he likes it. Bah ! " 

At the same time he was full, in certain moods, of 
geniality and kindness. He loved to provide expensive 
and even elaborate entertainments for his fisherman 
friends. He was whimsically generous with his money ; 
he would advance loans in cases which he thought to 
be deserving, and refuse to be repaid. At the same 
time he was not popular in the neighbourhood ; he was 
thought highly eccentric, and the words " dotty " and 
"soft" were freely applied to him by the country- 
people. He was aware of this himself, and often con- 
soled himself by saying frankly that all FitzGeralds 
were mad. 

The^truth is, that though a man of great intellectual 
power, much nobleness and tenderness of character, he 
was not cast quite enough in the ordinary mould for 
his own convenience. He just did not possess the 
ordinary hold on the conventional methods and usages 
of life which is accepted as the test of the capacity for 
simple citizenship. Many people are fond of their own 
habits and their own ways. But when this tendency 
is pursued so far that a man constantly deviates in 
small points from the habits of ordinary people, he is 
bound to acquire a reputation for eccentricity which 
vitiates his influence and causes him to be regarded 
with a certain compassionate contempt. We who 
have the opportunity of looking deeper may resolutely 
disregard this in the light of his high achievements and 
his great friendships. But the fact remains that this 
uncertainty, this fitfulness, this helplessness, as he 
himself called it, was a sign of weakness rather than 
of strength. 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 177 

FitzGerald rather drifted into than deliberately- 
adopted his loosely strung mode of life. He con- 
stantly deplored the absence of practical activities in 
his own existence, and pressed the advisability of 
action on his friends, " She wishes to exert herself," 
he wrote of his sister, Mrs. de Soyres, "which is the 
highest wish a FitzGerald can form." No doubt he 
also wished to exert himself; but his attitude may 
remind us of the story told by the naturalist Buckland, 
of the monkey that crept into the big kettle that had 
just been set on the fire, finding the water agreeably 
warm ; and then, as the temperature increased, made 
some attempts to extricate himself, but found the 
contrast of the outer air each time so distressing, that 
he had not the courage to face it ; and ended by being 
nearly boiled alive. 

I suppose that FitzGerald did not realise, until it 
was too late, that practical life was becoming more 
impossible to him every year; he stood, as it were, 
shivering on the brink, half hoping that something 
might determine a step which he had not the courage 
spontaneously to take. At last he resigned himself to 
his fate, and devoted himself to warding off as far as 
possible the shadow of ennui, and the assaults of 
melancholy. 

And a melancholy life it was. " His life," said one 
of his friends, " is a succession of sighs, each stifled 
ere half uttered ; for the uselessness of sighing is as 
evident to him as the reason of it." 

But in this we cannot acquit him of a certain 
lack of moral courage. We may justify a man who, 
recognising in himself certain powers and aptitudes, 
deliberately adopts a mode of life, however uncon- 
ventional, in which such powers have free play. But 
FitzGerald's choice was not a deliberate one. He put 

N 



178 EDWAKD FITZGERALD [chap. 

off the decision from month to month, and from year 
to year, till there was nothing left to decide. Again, 
there is a still further lack of self-respect to be con- 
demned in his shabby, desultory, slovenly habits of life. 
A hermit who is deliberately dirty and uncomfortable, 
because he attaches a certain moral weight to the 
avoidance of all the conveniences and conventionalities 
of life, may be admired at a distance, though his ad- 
mirers may shun personal contact. He is at all events 
the victim of a theory. But there is not so much to be 
said for a man like FitzGerald, who had the instincts 
of a gentleman, and a knowledge of the usages of the 
world. It may be tiresome to be shaved and brushed 
and decently habited ; but the man who cannot sustain 
the trouble involved in arriving at this result is a 
social malingerer. Austerity is one thing and sloven- 
liness is another. The most that can be said for 
FitzGerald is that his sloppiness was innocent. But 
it was not only a superficial sloppiness ; it penetrated 
the mind and character as well; and though no 
criticisms can derogate from the abundant charm, the 
delicate tenderness, the refinement, the sweetness, the 
fancy, the humour of the man, yet it is impossible in 
.reading his letters to resist the wish that he would, so 
//to speak, pull himself together. One feels that the fine 
v' qualities of his mind and character would have gained 
■' rather than have suffered by a little more discipline, 
; a little more self-control. 

The possibilities of such a life as he led were great. 
FitzGerald enjoyed absolute liberty, and never felt 
the pressure of pecuniary anxieties. But by his want 
of method, his whimsical pettishness, his lack of 
initiative and diligence, his slovenliness, he somehow 
failed to make his life a wholly dignified one. 

No one ever wrote with more insight than Fitz- 



viii.] HABITS — CHARACTER 179 

Gerald of the delights and pains of the idle life. And 
this is what perhaps saddens one most — that he saw 
his own case with absolute lucidity, and was under no 
delusions in the matter. He deprecated any attempt 
to confer upon him a dignity to which he laid no claim. 
He wrote to F. Tennyson: — 

" It really gives me pain to hear you or any one else call 
me a philosopher, or any good thing of the sort. I am none, 
never was ; and, if I pretended to be so, was a hypocrite. 
Some things, as wealth, rank, respectability, I don't care a 
straw about; but no one can resent the toothache more, uor 
fifty other little ills beside that flesh is heir to. But let us 
leave all this." 

At first, perhaps, he was inclined to take up a more 
philosophical standpoint ; to think of himself as a 
shadow-haunted dreamer. It is true that his life 
seemed very purposeless ; and yet the purposes to 
which he saw others devote their lives seemed to him 
more dreary and unsubstantial still, and not more 
innocent. He wrote, in 1839, to Bernard Barton, after 
giving a description of his occupations : — 

"... For all which idle ease I think I must be damned. 
I begin to have dreadful suspicions that this fruitless way of 
life is not looked upon with satisfaction by the open eyes 
above. One really ought to dip for a little misery : perhaps 
however all this ease is only intended to turn sour by-and-bye, 
and so to poison one by the very nature of self-indulgence. j 
Perhaps, again, as idleness is so very great a trial of virtue,/ 
the idle man who keeps himself tolerably chaste, etc., may' 
deserve the highest reward : the more idle, the more deserv- 
ing. Really I don't jest : but I don't propound these things 
as certain." 

Yet there was no one who, from sad and listless 
experience, could speak so forcibly and directly of the 
need of activity, the stimulus of practical life. Thus 
he wrote to Mrs. Browne : — 



180 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

" I can vouch with all the rest whom I have known like 
myself, that there is no happiness but with some settled plan 
of action before one." 

And again to W. F. Pollock : — 

"I have been all my life apprentice to this heavy business 
of idleness ; and am not yet master of my craft ; the Gods are 
too just to suffer that I should." 

And again, with the thought in his mind that so 
much of the activity he saw about him was mere vanity 
and vexation of spirit : — 

" I believe I love poetry almost as much as ever : but 
then I have been suffered to doze all these years in the enjoy- 
ment of old childish habits and sympathies, without being 
called on to more active and serious duties of life. I have 
not put away childish things, though a man. But, at the 
same time, this visionary inactivity is better than the mis- 
chievous activity of so many I see about me ; not better than 
the useful and virtuous activity of a few others : John Allen 
among the number." 

And in the same strain : — 

" They say it is a very bad Thing to do Nothing : but I 
am sure that is not the case with those who are born to 
Blunder ; I always find that I have to repent of what I have 
done, not what I have left undone ; and poor W. Browne 
used to say it was better even to repent of what [was] undone 
than done." 

But he could urge the activity he could not practise 
upon others. He wrote to W. H. Thompson : — 

" I dare say you are right about an Apprenticeship in Red 
Tape being necessary to make a Man of Business : but is it 
too late in Life for you to buckle to and screw yourself up to 
condense some of your Lectures and scholarly Lore into a 
Book ? By ' too late in Life ' I mean too late to take Heart 
to do it." 

Then when he tried to rouse himself, and took 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 181 

a taste of London bustle, his lieart drew liim back 
to tlie country. He wrote to Bernard Barton in 
1842 : — 

" In this big London, all fall of intellect and pleasure and 
business, I feel pleasure in dipping down into the country, and 
rubbing my hand over the cool dew upon the pastures, as it 
were. I know very few people here : and care for fewer ; 
I believe I should like to live in a small house just outside 
a pleasant English town all the days of my life, making myself 
useful in a humble way, reading my books, and playing a 
rubber of whist at night. But England cannot exj^ect long 
such a reign of inward quiet as to suffer men to dwell so 
easily to themselves. But Time will tell us : — 

" ' Come what come may, 
Time and the Hour runs through the roughest day.' " 

And when he was content, he managed to get rid of 
misgivings. He wrote to Mrs. Charlesworth in 1844 : 

" I get radishes to eat for breakfast of a morning: with 
them comes a savour of earth that brings all the delicious 
gardens of the world back into one's soul, and almost draws 
tears from one's eyes." 

Or again, to Frederic Tennyson, in a still more 
exalted mood : — 

" I remember you did not desire to hear about my garden, 
which is now gorgeous with large red poppies, and lilac irises 
— satisfactory colouring : and the trees murmur a continuous 
soft chorus to the solo which my soul discourses ivithin." 

But then the dreary round of life would settle down 
upon him. He wrote to W. F. Pollock : — 

" Oh, if you were to hear ' Where and oh where is my 
Soldier Laddie gone ' played every three hours in a languid 
way by the Chimes of Woodbridge Church, wouldn't you 
wish to hang yourself ? On Sundays we have the ' Sicilian 
Mariner's Hymn ' — very slow indeed. I see, however, by a 
Handbill in the Grocer's Shop that a Man is going to lecture 



182 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

on the Gorilla in a few weeks. So there is something to look 
forward to." 

The thought which paralysed FitzGerald, with the 
strong instinct for perfection wdiicli lie had, was that 
his own equipment was so slight and one-sided. He 
wanted time, time to study and amass knowledge, and 
then time to arrange it. He wrote to Allen : — 

" I don't know any one who has thought out anything so 
little as I have. I don't see to any end, and should keep silent 
till I have got a little more, and that little better arranged." 

But life see^red so short, and the perplexitj^ so great, 
that he found himself reduced to despair at the thought 
of all the lines of thought that had to be mastered, the 
systems that had to be harmonised. 

He wrote to Cowell in one of these moods : — 

". , . A book is to me what Locke says that watching the 
hour hand of a clock is to all ; other thoughts (and those of 
the idlest and seemingly most irrelevant) will intrude between 
my vision and the written words : and then I have to read 
over again ; often again and again, till all is crossed and 
muddled. If Life were to be very much longer than is the 
usual lot of men, one would try very hard to reform this 
lax habit, and clear away such a system of gossamer asso- 
ciation ; even as it is, I ti-y to turn all wandering fancy out 
of door and listen attentively to Whately's Logic, and old 
Spinoza still 1 " 

Sometimes he dropped into a mood of pettish 
pessimism ; and nothing better illustrates his aloof- 
ness from life than that his dislike of the new man- 
nerisms of talk and society, which he began to 
encounter, should have seemed to him not matters of 
indifference, but food for the profoundest melancholy. 
That is the inevitable penalty which fastidious men 
who stand apart from the rapid current of life have 
to pay. 



VIII.] HABITS — CHAUACTER 183 

Yet he could sometimes rise into a higher and more 
hopeful vein, but too rarely. He wrote to F. Tenny- 
son : — 

" In the meantime, all goes on toward better and better, 
as is my firm belief : and humanity grows clear by flowing 
(very little profited by any single sage or hero), and man 
shall have wings to fly and something much better than that 
in the end. . . ." 

Of practical politics FitzGerald took but little 
heed. Tennyson once said with much perspicacity that 
patriotism was not nearly so common a virtue as was 
supposed; but it is probably equally true, from a 
different point of view, that it is far more common 
than one would imagine. Love of liberty and love of 
country are so much taken for granted by Englishmen 
that it does not occur to them to indulge in protesta- 
tions on the subject. Just as a normal man is not 
conscious of health until he begins to lose it, so the 
silence of Englishmen on these points may be taken 
as a sign that neither the freedom of the individual 
nor the independence of England has been of late 
years seriously endangered. FitzGerald did not con- 
cern himself with the details of politics. ''Don't write 
politics," he wrote to F. Tennyson in 1853 ; " I agree 
with you beforehand." But still he had a very deep 
and true devotion to his country, which only occasion- 
ally came to the surface ; as he wrote to Thompson : — 

" I like that such men as Frederic [Tennyson] should be 
abroad : so strong, haughty, and passionate. They keep up 
the English character abroad. . . ." 

In a half-generous, half-pessimistic mood, he wrote 
to Frederic Tennyson : — 

" Well, say as you will, there is not, and never was, such a 



184 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap, 

country as Old England, never were there such a Gentry as 
the English. They will be the distinguishing mark and 
glory of England in History, as the Ai-ts were of Greece, 
and War of Rome. I am sure no travel would carry me to 
any land so beautiful as the good sense, justice, and liberality 
of my good countrymen make this. And I cling closer to 
it, because I feel that we are going down the hill, and shall 
perhaps live ourselves to talk of all this independence as a 
thing that has been. To none of which you assent perhaps. 
At all events, my paper is done, and it is time to have 
done with this solemn letter. I can see you sitting at a 
window that looks out on the bay of Naples, and Vesuvius 
with a faint smoke in the distance : a half-naked man under 
you cutting up water-melons, etc. Haven't I seen it all in 
Annuals, and in the ballet of Masaniello long ago?" 

As the years went on, the hopefulness decreased, 
the pessimism grew upon him ; but it is clear that he 
only took a poetical view of politics. He loved the 
spirit of a land that was so free and so beautiful, but 
he cared little for the history of the steps by which 
her fair pre-eminence had been won ; he would have 
agreed with Clough that for a Greek the important 
thing was that the battle of Marathon should have 
been fought ; but that to know how and when it had 
been fought mattered little. 

Occasionally he plunged boldly into large philo- 
sophical speculations. The opening panorama which 
science appeared likely to reveal to men he treats of 
in a lofty vein in a letter to Cowell : — 

" Yet, as I often think, it is not the poetical imagination, 
but bare Science that every day more and more unrolls a 
greater Epic than the Iliad; the History of the World, the 
infinitudes of Space and Time ! I never take up a book of 
Geology or Astronomy but this strikes me. And when we 
think that Man must go on to discover in the same plodding 
way, one fancies that the Poet of to-day may as well fold hia 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 185 

hands, or turn them to dig and delve, considering how soon 
the marcli of discovery will distance all hisimagiuations, [and] 
dissolve the language in which they are uttered. Martial, as 
you say, lives now, after two thousand years ; a space that 
seems long to us whose lives are so brief ; but a moment, the 
twinkling of an eye, if compared (not to Eternity alone) but 
to the ages which it is now known the world must have 
existed, and (unless for some external violence) must continue 
to exist. Lyell, in his book about America, says that the falls 
of Niagara, if (as seems certain) they have worked their way 
back southwards for seven miles, must have taken over 
35,000 years to do so, at the rate of something over a foot a 
year ! Sometimes they fall back on a stratum that crumbles 
away from behind them more easily : but then again they 
have to roll over rock that yields to them scarcely more pei'- 
ceptibly than the anvil to the serpent. And those very soft 
strata which the Cataract now erodes contain evidences of a 
race of animals, and of the action of seas washing over them, 
long before Niagara came to have a distinct current ; and the 
rocks "were compounded ages and ages before those strata! 
So that, as Lyell says, the Geologist looking at Niagara for- 
gets even the i-oar of its waters in the contemplation of the 
awful processes of time that it suggests. It is not only that 
this vision of Time must wither the Poet's hope of immor- 
tality ; but it is in itself more wonderful than all the concep- 
tions of Dante and Milton." 



What he felt about religion and religious specula- 
tion is not difficult to divine. He was deeply stirred, 
it is clear, in early days by the strong, vital faith of 
Matthews the evangelist ; but the bent of his whole 
mind was towards scepticism. He was heard once in 
his later life murmuring to himself the words, "Though 
your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; 
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as 
wool " ; but the utterance is to be attributed, I believe, 
more to a sense of the haunting beauty of the words 
than to any religious motive. The most precise and 



186 ED^YARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

definite religious systems, after all, can only profess to 
touch the fringe of the deep and perennial mysteries 
of life. They serve to brighten only the crescent 
edge of the shadowy orb, and leave the dark tracts 
unrevealed. The mystery of pain, of evil, of the 
future life, of the brevity of existence — these can- 
not be solved. The utmost that religion can do is to 
illuminate a few yards of the glimmering pathway, 
and say that the descending darkling stair must be 
trodden in the light of Faith. But a mind like Fitz- 
Gerald's demanded more certainty. Though he saw 
clearly that he himself and minds like his own, acute, 
questioning, unsatisfied minds, must be condemned to 
doubt, he held strong and sensible views on the 
benefits of religion for the community, for simpler 
minds and hearts. He wrote a very remarkable letter 
to Carlyle on the subject : — 



" I was very glad of your letter : especially as regards that 
part in it about the Derbyshire "soUages. In maoy other parts 
of England (not to mention my own Snffolk) you would find 
the same substantial goodness among the people, resulting (as 
you say) from the funded virtues of many good humble men 
gone by. I hope you v;i\l continue to teach us all, as you 
have done, to make some use and profit of aU this : at least, not 
to let what good remains to die away under penury and neglect. 
I also hope you will have some mercy now, and in future, on 
the • Hebrew rags ' which are grown offensive to you ; con- 
sidering that it was these rags that reaUy did bind together 
those virtues which have transmitted down to ns all the good 
you noticed in Derbyshire. If the old creed was so com- 
mendably effective in the (Jenerals and Counsellors of two 
hundred years ago, I think we may be well content to let it 
work still among the ploughmen and weavers of to-day ; and 
even to suft'er some absurdities in the Form, if the Spirit does 
well upon the whole. Even poor Exeter Hall ought, I think, 
to be borne with ; it is at least better than the wretched 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 187 

Oxford business. AYhen I was in Dorsetshire some weeks 
ago, and saw chancels done up in Sky-blue and gold, with 
niches, caudles, an Altar, rails to keep off the profane laity, 
and the parson (like your Reverend Mr. Hitch i) intoninff yvith 
his back to the people, I thought the Exeter Hall war-cry of 
' The Bible — the whole Bible — and nothing but the Bible' a 
good cry : I wanted Oliver and his Dragoons to march in and 
put an end to it all. Yet our Established Parsons (when 
quiet and in their senses) make good country gentlemen, and 
magistrates ; and I am glad to secure one man of means and 
education in each parish of England : the people can always 
resort to Wesley, Bunyan, and Baxter, if they want stronger 
food than the old Liturgy, and the orthodox Discourse. I 
think you will not read what I have written : or be very 
bored with it. But it is written now." 

Meanwhile lie lived as best lie migM. In such 
current conceptions of religion he could not rest. He 
could but say with a wistful affectation of cynicism : — 
" Qu'est-ce que cela fait si je m'amuse ? " 

And in the presence of hopeless failure and grief — 
" I do not know ; I cannot help : and I distress myself 
as little as I can." 

And then, with a gentle tolerance for a life which 
seemed, as he looked back upon it, both ineffective 
and full of mistakes : — 

"... I wait here, partly because of Nieces and Nephews 
on either hand of me, and partly to give time for a little 
Flower and Leaf to come up inland. Also, a little absurd 
Lodging is so much pleasanter than the grave House one 
built. "What Blunders one has to look back on, to be sure ! 
So many, luckily, that one has ceased to care for any one. 
Walpole congratulated himself on one point: knowing what 
he wanted : I fancy you are wise in that also. But for most 
of us — 

" ' Man is but Man, and what he most desires. 
Pleases at first : then pleases not ; then tires ! ' " 

1 V. Carlyle's Cromwell, vol. 1. p. 193 (1st ed.). 



188 EDVv'AIlD FITZGERALD [chap. 

It is, after all, a melancholy picture. Not without 
loss can a man withdraw himself from the world and 
shirk the primal inheritance of labour. Our admiration 
of the man and of his best work cannot blind us to the 
fact that this irresolution, this languid lingering upon 
the skirts of life, is not a beautiful nor an admirable 
thing. If the sacrifice had been made in the interests 
of art, it would have been different; but FitzGerald 
had no illusions on this point either. He often insists 
on the cardinal truth that life is above art, that art is 
a service, not a dominion : that art must minister to 
life, not life to art. There is a certain priestly mood 
which falls upon those in whom the need for creating 
what is beautiful is very imperious. FitzGerald had 
none of this ; he would have laughed at it as a species 
of pretentiousness. In this he was not necessarily right, 
but Ave are endeavouring to present his view of the 
case. The solemnity of Wordsworth, the affectation 
of Tennyson, were not only mistaken in FitzGerald's 
view, but slightly grotesque ; and thus we have the 
pathetic spectacle of a man choosing to hold aloof from 
life in a way that could only have been justified if it 
had been the result of a deliberate theory, a constrain- 
ing vocation. We see him regretting his own indeci- 
sion, and urging on his friends the imperative duty of 
taking a hand in the game; and yet unable to put 
his theories into practice, and trifling with life in a 
melancholy rather than in a cynical spirit. FitzGerald 
is thus, as I have said, a Hamlet of literature, clear- 
sighted, full of the sense of mystery and wonder and 
beauty ; yet unable to dedicate himself to the creative 
life, from lack of a certain vitality, and from an un- 
happy capacity of seeing both sides of a question ; and 
yet from indolence and irresolution unable to throw 
in his lot with the humdrum cares and duties that, 



viii.] HABITS — CHARACTEE 189 

after all, bring peace and content into the majority 
of lives. 

Yet these are but the shadows of temperament; 
deep in FitzGerald's heart lay an abundance of simple 
treasures. He was loving and loyal; quietly and 
unostentatiously generous ; iiidolent as he was, he 
would take endless trouble in details to serve his 
friends. He was pure-minded with an almost virginal 
delicacy. " FitzGerald and Spedding," said W. H. 
Thompson, " were two of the purest-living men among 
my intimates." But besides the effusiveness of senti- 
ment which weakened FitzGerald for practical life, 
there was another tendency likely to beset a sensitive 
nature. He lived little in the future, and much in the 
past. The thought that a happy day was passing 
clouded his enjoyment of it; the remembrance of 
the days that are no more came in like a shadow 
between him and the present. This he endeavoured 
to meet by cultivating as far as he could a stoical 
attitude. He tried, like Goethe, with the sensitive 
instinct for sparing himself pain, not to grieve ; 
feeling that if he dwelt upon the thought of death 
or loss, it would break his burdened heart. Thus, 
even in the midst of a tender and delicate retro- 
spect, we are checked as it were by a sudden chill. 
It was probably this reluctance to suffer, this emo- 
tional indolence, that deprived FitzGerald of that 
supreme gift of poetry. It is hard to say how the 
greatest and most sensitive of poets bear their grief ; 
perhaps the secret is that, together with the intensity 
of suffering, they have a similarly strong power of 
recuperation. They descend inevitably into the dark ; 
and when they have emerged again they can say what 
they have seen. But even this luxury of literary 
emotion was denied to FitzGerald, because he could 



190 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

not face the suffering tliat is a necessary condition of 
the song. Once in his life he went deep and bore the 
spoils away ; in Omar he faced the darkest thoughts 
that lay at the bottom of his heart, and spoke out. 

But otherwise his literary occupations were planned 
more to deaden than to quicken thought. He took 
refuge in translations and selections. He was too 
restless to be wholly inactive. Yet the sight of perfec- 
tion, of great thoughts nobly expressed, did not quicken 
him to emulation, but rather encouraged him to stand 
aside and to take refuge in judging; in knowing by 
trained instinct and practical appreciation how far 
perfection had been attained. 

I imagine that FitzGerald's one haunting thought 
was regret. An impersonal regret for all the beauty 
and charm of the world that flowered only to die ; and 
a more personal regret that he had not been able to 
put out his powers to do and to be. He was over- 
shadowed by a constant sense of the brevity, the 
fleeting swiftness, of time, the steady, irrevocable 
lapsing of life to death. Melancholy takes many 
forms; in some it finds its materials in anxious and 
gloomy forebodings of what the future may bring or 
take away ; with some the present seems irremediably 
dreary. But FitzGerald lived in a wistful regret for 
the beautiful hours that were gone, the days that are 
no more. Tennyson called this feeling " the passion 
of the past," but said that in his own case it was not a 
sadness born of experience, but rather the luxurious 
melancholy of youth ; and that with him it tended to 
diminish as the years went on. But with FitzGerald 
it was, it seems, an ever-present sense. Beneath and 
behind the sweet sounds and sights of the earth that he 
loved so well, he heard the sidlen echo of a voice that 
warned him that all was passing away. " It gives me," 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 191 

he wrote, " a strange sort of Pleasure to walk about 
the old Places among the falling leaves once more." 
As the golden light of evening crept over the pastures, 
touching tree and field with the strange and sweet 
tranquillity of bright outline and lengthened shadow, 
he said within his heart that it was all exquisitely and 
profoundly beautiful, but that the sweet hour was 
numbered with the past even as he gazed. All present 
enjoyment was darkened for FitzGerald by the pressure 
of this insistent thought. As the sweet summer day 
rose, shone, waned, he wrote to Cowell in India : — 

" I am sitting as of old in my accustomed Bedroom, looking 
out on a Landscape which your Eyes woiild drink. It is said 
there has not been such a Flush of Verdure for years : and 
they are making hay on the Lawn before the house, so as one 
wakes to the tune of the Mower's Scythe-whetting, and with 
the old Perfume blowing in at open windows. . . . 

" June over ! A thing I think of with Omar-like sorrow. 
And the Roses here are blowing — and going — as abundantly 
as even in Persia. I am still at Geldestone, and still looking 
at Omar by an open window which gives over a Greener 
Landscape than yours." 

And in the sad days of his married life, dreaming of 
the old congenial friendships, he wrote to Cowell : — 

"Shall we ever meet again? I think not; or not in such 
plight, both of us, as will make Meeting what it used to be. 
Only to-day I have been opening dear old Salaraan : the 
original Copy we bought and began this time three years ago 
at Oxford ; with all my scratches of Query and Explanation 
in it, and the Notes from you among the Leaves. How often I 
think with Sorrow of my many Harshnesses and Impatiences ! 
which are yet more of manner than Intention. My wife is sick 
of hearing me sing in a doleful voice the old Glee of ' When shall 
we Three Meet again ? ' Especially the Stanza, ' Though in 
foreign Lands we sigh, Parcht beneath a hostile Sky,' etc. 
How often too I think of the grand Song written by some 
Scotch Lady, which I sing to myself for you on Ganges Banks ! "' 



192 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

With this personal sense of loss went a deeper sense 
of the endless pathos of the world, of the sadness 
which is yet in itself beautiful. The following frag- 
ment is like a vignette of Bewick; the crumbling 
walls, the singing bird, and the old man feeling that 
his own feeble life was lapsing into ruin too : — 

" I have at last bid adieu to poor old Diinwich : the Robin 
singing in the Ivy that hangs on those old Priory walls. A 
month ago I wrote to ask Cailyle's Niece about her Uncle, 
and telling her of this Priory, and how her Uncle would once 
have called me Dilettante ; all which she read to him ; he 
only said ' Poor, Poor old Priory ! ' " 

He was ever sensitive to these slight, wistful, fugitive 
effects: here is a little bit of sweet humanity — 
wholesome and tender like the man's own loving 
heart : — 

" AVhen I was in Paris in 1830, just before that Revolution, 
I stopped one Evening on the Boulevards by the Madeleine to 
listen to a Man who was singing to his Barrel-organ. Several 
passing ' Blouses ' had stopped also : not only to listen, but to 
join in the Songs, having bought little Libretti of the words 
from the Musician. I bought one too ; for, I suppose, the 
smallest French Coin ; and assisted in the Song which the 
Man called out beforehand (as they do Hymns at Church), 
and of which I enclose you the poor little Copy. ' Le Bon 
Pasteur, s'il vous plait' — I suppose the Circumstances: the 
' beau temps,' the pleasant Boulevards, the then so amiable 
People, all contributed to the effect this Song had upon me ; 
anyhow, it has constantly revisited my memory for these forty- 
three years; and I was thinking, the other day, touched me 
more than any of Beranger's most beautiful Things. This, 
however, may be only one of ' Old Fitz's ' Crotchets, as 
Tennyson and others would call them." 

And again in the letter which relates to the death 
of George Crabbe of Bredfield, which gives a fine 
instance of his sober grief, neither forced nor self- 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 193 

conscious, he puts into words tliat dreary sense of 
sadness whicli all know, which is aroused by the sight 
of all the little arrangements and furniture of a life, 
the trifling objects of daily, familiar use, when that 
life slips suddenly into the darkness : — 

" You may imagine it was melancholy enough to me to 
revisit the old house when He who had made it so warm for 
me so often lay cold in his Coffin unable to entertain me 
any more ! His little old dark Study (which I called the 
Cobblery) smelt strong of its old Smoke : and the last 
Cheroot he had tried lay three-quarters smoked in its little 
China ash-pan. This I have taken as a Relic, as also a little 
silver Nutmeg Grater which used to give the finishing Touch 
to many a Glass of good hot Stuff, and also had belonged to 
the Poet Crabbe. . . ." 

And in FitzGerald's heart, behind the sorrow of the 
world, lay the strong yearning to be loved, to be 
remembered, to leave something which, when the book 
of life is shut, should still mingle with the current of 
the world's life and hold its place there. 

" . . . It is a very odd thing, but quite true, I assure you, 
that before your letter came I was sitting at breakfast alone, 
and reading some of Moore's Songs, and thinking to myself 
how it was fame enough to have written but one song — air, 
or words — which should in after days solace the sailor at the 
wheel, or the soldier in foreign places! — be taken up into 
the life of England ! No doubt ' The Last Rose of Summer ' 
will accomplish this." 

It may be said that all this belongs to the region of 
luxurious and self-conscious emotion ; and that the 
sorrows and activities of life leave but little room for 
dalliance with such frail and wistful thoughts. But if 
so, then the pressure of real life is a hardening and a 
coarsening thing; and further, there must be many, 
even among those who are moving among realities, for 



194 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

whom in quiet hours such thoughts must lie in wait. 
We may label them unmanly and unreal ; but it is an 
unjust and tyrannical mood that would thus deal with 
the twilight thoughts of the heart. Between the sun- 
shine and the dark there are infinite gradations, and it 
is in the perception of these softer and more delicate 
emotions, these thoughts that arise and are born be- 
tween the darkness and the day, that the incommuni- 
cable essence of wonder and delight consists. And 
whether we approve or no, it was in this half-lit region 
that FitzGerald's life was spent. Some would perhaps 
say that his ethical and religious views were the cause 
of his half-heartedness. Thompson, the Master of 
Trinity, uttered the shallow dictum that FitzGerald 
was a prisoner in Doubting Castle, as though by an 
effort he might have escaped and fared forward. But 
FitzGerald's vague religious views were the effect of 
temperament, and not the cause of his failure. He 
was not one who could take a creed on trust. And 
even a creed is, as it were, only a surface solution, and 
gives no explanation of the dark mystery of life and 
death, and heeds it not except in so far as it can 
trample over it in courageous disregard. " Healing is 
well," FitzGerald might have said, "but wherefore 
wounds to heal ? " A creed is a refuge of ardent and 
practical natures, who feel that they must put in for 
the struggle and try to amend what God somehow 
seems to allow to be amiss. But one who has no 
power of practical activity sinks deeper and deeper 
into the darkness of the question why so much must 
be amiss, and what all this weary strife denotes. 

It is hard to say whether enforced activity would 
have saved FitzGerald, but it is certain that, given the 
conditions of his life, the shadow was inevitable. As 
FitzGerald sadly wrote in his version of The Mighty 



viii.] HABITS — CHARACTER 195 

Magician, in lines where it is hard to believe he had 
not himself in mind : — 

" Well, each his way and humour ; some to lie 
Like Nature's sickly children in her lap, 
While all the stronger brethren are at play." 

FitzGerald possessed, in a strong degree, a spec- 
tacular habit of mind. His failure in the region of 
practical activities was due mainly to the fact that he 
stood aloof from life, and watched it, sometimes with 
a mournful wonder, sometimes with a humorous jest, 
streatn past him, the pictures taking shape and be- 
coming blurred, the groups gathering and dissolving, 
as in a fantastic dream. 

Thus he writes to Allen : — 

"... My brother John's wife, always delicate, has had an 
attack this year, which she can never get over : and while we 
are all living in this house cheerfully, she lives in separate 
rooms, can scarcely speak to us, or see us : and bears upon 
her cheek the marks of death. She has shown great Christian 
dignity all through her sickness : was the only cheerful per- 
son when they sujiposed she could not live : and is now very 
composed and happy. You say sometimes how like things 
are to dreams : or, as I think, to the shifting scenes of a play. 
So does this place seem to me. All our family, except my 
mother, are collected here : all my brothers and sisters, with 
their wives, husbands, and children : sitting at different 
occupations, or wandering about the grounds and gardens, 
discoursing each their separate concerns, but all united into 
one whole. The weather is delightful : and when I see them 
passing to and fro, and hear their voices, it is like scenes of 
a play. I came here only yesterday." 

He had no desire to step down and mingle with the 
flowing tide ; still less to modify or direct the action 
of the play ; so he loitered apart in his green garden, 
noting, approving, wondering, moralising, not a man, 
but the shadow of a man. 



196 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

The instinct which lay deepest of all in FitzGerald's 
nature was the need of affection. In early days this 
was so urgent, that he had even no difficulty in giving 
it voice. He wrote to Allen, welcoming a letter from 
the latter : — 

" It has indeed been a long time coming ; but it is all the 
more delicious. Perhaps you can't imagine how wistfully I 
have looked for it : how, after a walk, my eyes have turned 
to the table, on coming into the room, to see it. Sometimes 
I have been tempted to be angry with you : but then I 
thought that I was sure that you would come a hundred 
miles to serve me, though you were too lazy to sit down to a 
letter. I suppose that people who are engaged in serious 
ways of life, and are of well-filled minds, don't think much 
about the interchange of letters with any anxiety : but I am 
an idle fellow, of a very ladylike turn of sentiment : and my 
friendships are more like loves, I think." 

All through his life we see him constrained into 
friendships, not the quiet, unromantic friendships of 
an ordinary man, but strong, almost unbalanced pre- 
occupations. But even these became, as time went on, 
more and more difficult to maintain, owing to Fitz- 
Gerald's invincible shyness in the presence even of 
those whom he loved, his dislike of change, his in- 
creasing desire for seclusion. 

Even in the case of the beloved Cowell, after his 
absence in India, FitzGerald had a great difficulty in 
picking up the dropped threads. He wrote : — 

"... I hope you don't think I have forgotten you. Your 
visit gave me a sad sort of Pleasure, dashed with the Memory 
of other Days; I now see so few People, and those all of the 
common sort, with whom I never talk of our old Subjects ; so 
I get in some measure unfitted for such converse, and am 
almost saddened with the remembrance of an old contrast 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 197 

when it comes. And there is something besides ; a Shadow 
of Death : but I won't talk of such things : only believe I 
don't forget you, nor wish to be forgotten by you. Indeed, 
your kindness touched me." 

And he becomes more averse to making the personal 
acquaintance even of those with whom, as a corre- 
spondent, he was on almost intimate terms ; to make a 
new acquaintance in person was evidently of the nature 
of a terror to the diffident man. 

But in spite of his own diffidence, to be surrounded 
with love seemed to FitzGerald the one thing worth 
having in the world. Writing of a friend, who had 
lately been left a widow, he said : — 

" She, though a wretchedly sickly woman, and within two 
months of her confinement when he died, has somehow 
weathered it all beyond Expectation. She has her children 
to attend to, and be her comfort in turn: and though having 
lost what most she loved yet has something to love still, and 
to be beloved by. There are worse Conditions than that." 

And again of a devoted friendship between two 
boatmen: — 

" I tell Newson he has at last found his Master, and become 
possessed of that troublesome thing : an anxious Regard for 
some one." 

One of the most salient features of FitzGerald's 
whole view of life is this. He expected so much from 
it : his mind was like a sensitive plate which catches 
impressions with delicate fidelity ; and the result was 
that to FitzGerald every moment was an occasion. 
The glance of an eye, the gesture of a hand, the ivy 
on a ruined wall, the piping of a bird, the glitter of 
light on the leaves of a forest tree when the sun 
flares high overhead, the rolling up of great piles of 



198 EDWAED FITZGERALD [chap. 

cloud, the gliding plunge of a ship under a press of 
canvas — all these things came home to him with a 
sharp shock of pleasure. He was a lyrical poet in his 
power of taking hold of an isolated impression of 
some beautiful thing, but without the power of lyrical 
expression. The danger of such a temperament is 
that it demands too many of these impressions, and 
that life does not provide enough of them ; besides, 
it is not enough that they should be there ; there must 
be also a certain harmony of mood, a power of inter- 
pretation, a zest which it is not always in the power 
of the spirit to secure. Thus FitzGerald was in a 
certain high and emotional region a sensualist. A 
sensualist is generally understood to be a man with 
a keen appetite for strong and, as a rule, debasing 
sensations. But it is possible to be a sensualist in a 
higher world, the world of beauty. It is possible to 
have a certain uncontrolled avidity for beauty, and to 
be ill-content with the leagues of commonplace life 
that must be traversed without the coincidence of 
mood and beauty. Such a temperament can bring 
a man many moments of pleasure, but it can hardly 
bring happiness ; and it is almost inevitable that as 
the perceptions grow blunted and as vital energies 
decrease, a shadow should settle down upon the mind. 
This is to be clearly detected in FitzGerald's letters. 
He was, indeed, too much of a gentleman to inflict 
his moods directly upon his correspondent. His 
letters were often written with a kind of delicate 
courtesy, a desire to give pleasure to his reader ; but 
none the less is it clear that in much weariness and in 
a settled sadness he was beguiling the time as best 
he could, the time that denied him the joys he 
desired. 
EitzGerald seems to catch regretfully at the flying 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 199 

moment, that strange passing current that may not be 
delayed; even as he says, "Here is joy and beauty," 
the moment is gone. He was often face to face with 
the mystery that there is really no such thing as the 
present; the future beckons at first far off, then near; 
then even in the swift passage of thought when a man 
says of a sweet moment, " It is here," it is numbered 
with the past. There may be other beautiful moments 
in store for the heart, but never exactly the same 
again. Thus all FitzGerald's moments of happiness 
were clouded by the thought that all was passing, 
moving, changing. In his case this never turns to 
bitterness, but it turns to a mournful patience : — 

"One Moment in Annihilation's "Waste, 
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste — 

The Stars are setting and the Caravan 
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing — Oh, make haste 1 " 

Yet it is this very mood that gives PitzGerald his 
sad and strange power over the mind, for these are 
things that all have felt and have experienced; and 
what matters, after all, in a poet is not that the thing 
should be profitable, but that it should be true, so long 
as it is also made beautiful. For disguise it as we will 
by activities and by pleasures, we live under a shadow 
of doom. We may beguile it, we may banish it, but 
the tolling of the bell that heralds the end beats in our 
ears ; and we can but live soberly and innocently, 
taking all into account. He is wisest who can face 
the solemn music, and who, if he cannot be happy 
himself, can at least strive to contribute to the happi- 
ness of those to whom his heart goes out, who are 
bound upon the same mysterious pilgrimage. 

The question that remains is this : To what extent 
is a man bound to the service of men ? The answer is 



200 EDWARD FITZGERALD [chap. 

immensely complicated by the constitution of society, 
especially by the social order which authorises a man 
to live without labour upon the accumulations made 
by his ancestors. Given the shy and sensitive tem- 
perament, the acute and sceptical mind, the indolent 
disposition of FitzGerald, and the ample competence 
which he enjoyed, and the resultant was bound to be 
what it was. He was too sensitive to take his 
ambitions into the arena, too indolent to submit his 
kindly impulses to an organised system of philan- 
thropy; too uncertain to preach a faith which he could 
not hold. But it may be questioned whether the 
primal law which seems to indicate labour as a condi- 
tion of bodily and mental equilibrium can ever be 
quite successfully evaded. FitzGerald felt the need 
of organised work in his own life, but the pressure 
was never strong enough to induce him to submit 
himself to uneasy conditions. 

After all, the process of estimating the character 
even of the best of men must be of the nature of 
addition and subtraction. It is the final total that 
is our main concern. In FitzGerald's case, on the 
debit side of the account stand a certain childish- 
ness of disposition, indolence, a weak sentimentality, 
a slackness of moral fibre, a deep-seated infirmity of 
purpose. These may be partly condoned by an in- 
herited eccentricity. On the credit side stand a true 
loyalty of nature, an unobtrusive generosity, a real love 
of humanity, a moral clear-sightedness, an acute percep- 
tion of beauty, a literary gift that at its best was of the 
nature of genius. There can be little question on 
which side the balance lies. We may regret the want 
of strenuousness, the over-developed sensibility which 
led him to live constantly in the pathos of the past, 
the pain of the contemplation of perishable sweetness. 



VIII.] HABITS — CHARACTER 201 

But we may be thankful for so simple, so tender- 
liearted, so ingenuous a life ; we may feel that the 
long, quiet years were not misspent which produced, 
if so rarely, the delicate flowers of genius. To enrich 
the world with one imperishable poem, to make music 
of some of the saddest and darkest doubts that haunt 
the mind of man — this is what many far busier and 
more concentrated lives fail to do. To strew the 
threshold of the abyss with flowers, to dart an ethereal 
gleam into the encircling gloom, to set a garland of 
roses in the very shrine of death, to touch despair with 
beauty — this is to bear a part in the work of consoling 
men, of reconciling fate, of enlightening doom, of 
interpreting the vast and awful mind of God. Truth 
itself can do no more than hint at the larger hope — 
" It is He that hath made us." 



INDEX 



Abbey, Westminster, 61. 

Abbotsford, 160. 

^schylus, 152. 

Agamemnon, FitzGerald's trans- 
lation of, 51, 84, 85, 118, 120, 
121, 122. 

Aldeburgh, ei. 

Alien, Arcbdeacon, 6, 10, 14, 21, 
51, 52, 65, 68, 138, 151, 182, 195, 
196. 

Allen, Heron-, Mr., 102, 107 n. 

Anatomrj of Melancholy (Bur- 
ton), 154. 

Apologia (Newman), 155. 

Ariosto, 161. 

Arnold, Dr., 24, 155. 

Athenseum, 12, 35, 128. 

Atlantic Monthly, 56. 

Attar's Bird Parliament, Fitz- 
Gerald's translation of, 41, 89, 
94-95, 109. 

Austen, Jane, 63, 154. 

B 

Bacon, 34, 74. 

Barrow, 154. 

Barton, Bernard, 15-17, 22, 28, 

32, 67, 73, 139, 181. 
Barton, Bernard, Selections 

from the Poems and Letters 

of, 32, 84. 
Barton, Lucy, see FitzGerald, 

Mrs. (wife). 
Beranger, 162, 192. 



Beware of Smooth Water (play), 

126. 
Bird Parliament, The, 41, 89, 94- 

95, 109. 
Blakesley, 7. 
Boccaccio, 161. 
Borrow, George, 39, 111, 155. 
Boulge, 18, 21, 28, 61, 66. 
Bredfield,3, 19. 
"BredfieldHall," 14. 
Broad Stone of Honour, The 

(Kenelm Digby), 131 n. 
Browne, William Kenworthy, 14, 

15, 21, 22, 27, 38, 39, 4a^5, 68, 

132, 172, 173. 

Mrs. Kenwortby, 48, 179. 

Browning, 148, 161. 
Buller, Cbarles, 7. 
Burke, 154. 
Burue-Jones, 54, 
Burns, 134, 135. 
Byron, 72. 

C 

Calderon, 124, 125, 126, 127. 
Calderon, Six Drainas of, 35, 84, 

85. 
Cambridge, 6-8, 63, 148. 
Carew (poet), 14, 154. 
Carlyle, 22, 24, 25, 34, 36-38, 62, 

64, 67, 68, 72-76, 155, 172, 186. 
Carlyle (Froude),76. 
Carlyle's Reminiscences, 75, 76. 
Charlesworth, Mrs., 181. 
Cborley, John Rutter, 128. 



202 



INDEX 



203 



Christ Church, Oxford, 148. 

" Chronomoros," 14. 

Clarissa Harlowe (Richardsou) , 

51. 
Collins, Wilkie, 155. 
Cowell, Professor, 29 seq., 35, 36, 

38, 46, 52, 62, 63, 66, 67, 99, 110, 

124-125, 133, 151, 172, 173, 

182, 184, 191, 196. 

Mrs., 29 seq., 38, 172. 

Cowley, 112. 

Cowper, 154. 

Crabbe (poet), 19, 58, 59-61, 137. 

George (second), 19, 20, 28, 

42, 43, 192. 

(third), 19, 47, 62, G6. 

Miss Caroline, 23. 

Crabbe, Readings in, 58, 85. 
Cromwell, 2. 
Cromwell (Carlyle), 25. 

D 

Dante, 69, 72, 161. 

Darwin, 74. 

Days and Hours (Frederic Ten- 
nyson), 7 n. 

Dickens, 24, 75, 155, Life of 
(Forster), 161. 

Donne (poet), 14, 112. 

William Bodham, 4, 31, 43, 

63, 111, 140. 

Don Quixote (Cervantes), 162. 

Dryden, 154, 156. 

E 

East Anglian, The (journal), 53. 
Edgeworth, Frank, 6. 

Maria, 24. 

" Elegy to Anne Allen," 14. 

Eliot, George, 63, 155. 

Ely Cathedral, 148. 

Emerson, 155. 

Eaphranor, 44, 84, 86, 130-136. 

Euripides, 152. 



Fielding, 79, 154. 



FitzGerald, Edward — birth and 
family history, 2 ; school-days, 
4 ; boy friends, 4 ; youthful 
traits, 4-5 ; goes to Cambridge, 
6 ; contemporaries at the Uni- 
versity, 6-7 ; life at Cambridge, 
7-9 ; youthful ambitions, 8 ; 
visit to Paris with Thackeray, 
9 ; settles at Naseby, 10 ; first 
poems, 12 seq. ; forms various 
important friendships, 14, 15 ,• 
visits James Spedding with 
Tennyson, 17, 18 ; moves to 
Boulge Park, 18-20 ; mode of 
life there, 21-23, 28, 29, 32 ; 
friendship with Carlyle, 24, and 
Cowell, 29 ; engaged to Miss 
Barton, 32, 33 ; edits Barton's 
Letters and Poems, 32 ; altered 
circumstances, 32 ; death of 
his father, 33 ; publishes Polo- 
nius, 34 ; translates Calderon's 
plays, 35 ; moves to Farlingay 
Hall, 35 ; studies Persian, 36 ; 
publishes Saldmdn and Absdl, 
36 ; visit to Oxford and Bath, 
36 ; death of his mother, 36 ; 
entertains Carlyle at Far- 
lingay, 36 ; marriage and sub- 
sequent separation, 39-42 ; 
works at Omar Khayyam, 43 ; 
death of his friends, Browne 
and Crabbe, 43 ; life at 
Woodbridge, 46 seq. ; makes 
the acquaintance of Joseph 
Fletcher (" Posh"), 48 ; trans- 
lates more plays of Calderon, 
50 ; translates Agamemnon, 
51 ; resumes his intercourse 
with Cowell, 52 ; publication 
of the Omar, 53 ; contributes 
to the East Anglian, 53 ; de- 
clining years, 54 ; moves to 
Littlegrange, 55 ; entertains 
Tennyson, 57 ; contributes to 
the Ipsioich Journal, 58 ; pub- 
lishes Readings from Crabbe, 



204 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 



58 ; literary activity, 62 ; visits 
tlie Covs^ells at Cambridge, 63 ; 
receives tlie Calderon Gold 
Medal, 64 ; approaching end, 
64 ; death, 66. 

FitzGerald — personal appear- 
ance, 8, 170-171 ; simple tastes, 
10 ; religious views, 23, 27, 28, 
185 seq. ; love affairs, 23, 39- 
42 ; amusements, 47 ; love of 
the water, 47, 50; peculiari- 
ties, 50, 173 seq. ; melanclioly 
and pessimistic nature, 51, 182, 
184, 190; friendships, 4, 5, 6, 7, 
14, 15-19, 24, 29, 43^5, 62, 67- 
83; passionate interest in hu- 
manity, 60; "a great gentle- 
man," 143; sorrows, 143; a 
true judge of persons, 143; 
his preferences in art and 
music, 149-150 ; his prejudices, 
149; habits, 55-56, 166 se^. ; a 
vegetarian, 168 ; unconven- 
tionality, 171-172 ; affection- 
ate nature, 43-45, 63, 172; 
faults and shortcomings, 175 
seq.; politics, 183; good quali- 
ties, 189 seq. ; summing up of 
his character, 197-201. 

FitzGerald — summary of his 
writings, 84 seq. ; style, 2; let- 
ters, 1, 7 n., 136-146 ; literary 
instincts, 8, 9 ; characteris- 
tics of his poetry, 12; lyrical 
poetry, 10-14 ; translations, 
51, 109, 119-130; admiration 
for Crabbe's writings, 58; re- 
lations with and judgment of 
(a) Tennyson, 69-72; (jS) Car- 
lyle, 72-76 ; (7) Thackeray, 76- 
80; (5) James Spedding, 80- 
83 ; defects of his work, 85-89, 
121-124, 126, 127; compared 
with Omar Khayyam, 96 ; with 
Calderon, 125; his plays, 118; 
use of anecdote, 138 ; humour, 
139-140 ; his pen-pictures, 141 ; 



his critical powers, 142, 147, 
152-154, 156; essentially au 
amateur, 144; position in re- 
lation to contemporary poetry, 
144; devotion to the Classics, 
152; summing up of his liter- 
ary tastes, 163 seq. 
FitzGerald, John (father), 2, 3, 33. 

Mary Frances (mother), 2, 

3, 8, 24, 33, 34. 

John (brother), 26, 28, 35, 

36, 51, 52, 61. 

Mrs., n^e Barton (wife), 32, 

33, 39-42, 43, 48, 53, 66. 

Eleanor (sister), 9, 47. 

Maurice (nephew), 58. 

Gerald (nephew), 61. 

Fletcher (poet), 14. 

Joseph ("Posh"), 48 seq., 

53, 54, 62, 71, 172, 173. 

Fortunes of Niyel, The (Scott), 

63. 
Preiser's Magazine, 108, 110. 
French Revolution, The (Car- 

lyle),73. 
Froude, 76. 

G 

Gibbon, 135. 

Gil Bias, 162. 

Godefridus (Kenelm Digby),44, 

131. 
Godwin, Memoirs of, 158. 
Goethe, 69, 189. 
Gray (poet), 154, 157. 
Greek, FitzGerald's translations 

from, 118-124. 
Groome, Archdeacon, 6, 65. 

H 

Hafiz, Odes of, 36. 

Hallam, 163. 

Handel, 150. 

Hawthorne, 155. 

Hazlitt's Poets, 13. 

ITohj Grail, The (Tennyson) , 95. 

Homer, 152. 



INDEX 



205 



Horace, 153. 
Houghton, Lord, 7. 
Hugo, Victor, 148. 



Idylls (Tennyson), 70. 

7/1 Memoriam (Tennyson), 70, 

111. 
Ipswich Journal, The, 58. 



Jami, 89, 91, 109. 

Jebb, Sir Ricliard, 120. 

Johnson, 112. 

Johnson (Boswell), 155, 168. 

Jowett, 131. 

K 

Keats, 157. 

Keene, Charles (artist), 62. 

Kemble, John M., 4, 7. 

Fanny, 56, 61, 63, 66, 71, 140, 

173. 

Kerrich, Mrs. (FitzGerald's sis- 
ter), 9, 47. 

Kingsley, Charles, 81. 

Kitchin, George, Dean of Dur- 
ham, 31. 



Lamb, Charles, 12, 15, 16, 58, 
137, 158. 

Landor, 36. 

Laurence, Samuel (painter), 23, 
54, 64, 65, 72, 79, 80. 

Leader, The (journal), 35. 

Letters, FitzGerald's, Extracts 
from, 8, 18, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 
29, 30, 35, 38, 41-45, 47-50, 52, 
61, 63-65, 68-71, 72-77, 79-82, 
85-86, 89, 94, 99, 109-112, 119, 
133, 138-142, 150-153, 156-162, 
167, 179, 180-187, 191-193, 195- 
197. 

Lewes, G. H., 35. 

Lily (poet), 154. 



Lockhart, 72. 
Lonsdale, Bishop, 6. 
Lowell, 69, 127, 144, 151, 156. 
Lucretius, 153. 
Lyell (geologist) , 185. 

M 

Macaulay, 163. 

Magico Prodigioso, Shelley's 
translation of, 127. 

Matthews, Rev. T. R., 26, 27, 185. 

Maurice, Frederic, 7. 

Mayor of Zalamea, The, 125, 
128. 

Meadows in Spring, The (poem 
quoted), 10-12, 145. 

" Merchant's Daughter, The," 
14. 

Merivale, Dean, 7, 88. 

Mighty Magician, The (play), 
50, 84, 126^ 195. 

Milnes, Monckton — see Hough- 
ton. 

Milton, 148, 154, 156. 

Montaigne, 162. 

Montgomery, Robert, 13. 

Moor, Major, 5. 

N 

Naseby, Battle of, 25, 26. 
New comes. The (Thackeray) , 79. 
Newman, 34. 
Newman's Sermons, 155. 
Norton, Professor, 54, 69, 75, 94, 
142. 

O 

Oceana (Harrington), 154. 

CEdipus, FitzGerald's transla- 
tion, 120, 122, 123, 124. 

Old Beau, The, 14. 

Omar Kliayyam (poet), 96, 100. 

Omar Khayyam (poem) , 5, 29, 42, 
53, 54, 58, 84, 85, 89, 94, 95-117, 
118, 136, 144, 145; origin and 
analysis of the poem, 95-117 ; 



206 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 



time and manner of its appear- 
ance, 96-97 ; style, 97-98 ; story 
of FitzGerald's acquaintance 
with the original, 99 ; selection 
and arrangement, 101; inter- 
polations, 101; variations in 
the editions, 102-105; noblest 
stanzas of the poem, 105-107; 
publication and reception, 108 
seq. ; originality, 111 ; symbol- 
ism of the original poem, 112 ; 
motif, 114. 

Opium Eater (De Quincey), 74. 

Oxford, 30, 31. 

Oxford Movement, 187. 



Palace of Art, The (Tennyson), 

125. 
Parker (publisher), 110. 
Patmore, P. G., 158. 
Peel, Sir Robert, 16. 
Pepys's Diary, 168. 
Pirate, The (Scott), 159. 
Plato, Dialogues of, 132. 
Plays, FitzGerald's translations 

of, 118 seq. 
Plutarch, 152. 
Pollock, W. F., 54, 58, 159, 180, 

181. 
Polonius, 34, 84. 
Pope, 137, 154. 
Potter, Robert, 123. 
Princess, The (Tennyson), 70. 
Purcell, John, see FitzGerald 

(father) . 

Q 

Quaritch (publisher), 108, 110. 
Quarterly Review, 71. 

R 

Richardson, 154. 
Romany Rye (Borrow), 39. 
Rossetti, 108. 
Ruskin, 54. 



Sainte-Beuve, 162. 
Saldmcin and Absdl, 36, 58, 84, 
85, 89-94. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 59, 63, 72, 159, 
160. 

Selden, 34. 

Seneca, 153. 

Se'vigue, Madame de, 162. 

Shakespeare, 24, 72, 148, 154. > .* 

Smith, Mr. Job, 28, 35, 46. 

Alfred, 29, 33, 46, 56, 64, 172, 

173. 

Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 156. 

Sophocles, 152, 165. 

South, 154. 

Southey, 16. 

Soyres, Mrs. De (FitzGerald's 
sister), 62, 177, 

Spalding, Frederic, 49, 50. 

Spanish, FitzGerald's transla- 
tions from, 124 seq. 

Spectator (Addison), 154. 

Spedding, James, 7, 8, 17, 18, 56, 
62-(33, 67, 68, 80-83, 189. 

Spenser, 154. 

Stephen, Sir James, 81. 

Sir Leslie, 81. 

Such Stuff as Dreams are made 
of, 50, 84, 129. 

Swinburne, 108. 
Symonds, J. A., 137. 



Tales of the Hall (Crabbe), 59. 

Tasso, 161. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 154. 

Temple Bar, 46, 62. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 7, 17, 18, 24, 

54, '57, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68-72, 80, 

125, 134, 154, 172, 173, 188. 

Charles, 7, 154. 

Frederic, 7, 7 n., 8, 22, 29, 

30, 54, 68, 79, 140, 141, 154, 181, 

183. 
Hallam, 57. 



INDEX 



207 



Thackeray, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 24, 44, 

48, 54, 67, 68, 71, 72, 75, 76-80, 

148, 155, 172. 
Thompson, Dr. (Master of 

Trinity), 6, 39, 52, 53, 110, 180, 

189, im. 
Thucydides, 152. 
Tiresias (Tennyson), 57. 
"To a Lady singing" (poem 

quoted), 13. 
Tragedy, Greek, 119-120. 
Translations, FitzGerald's, from 

the Greek, 118-124; from the 

Spanish, 124-130. 
Trench, Archbishop, 7, 125. 
Trollope, 155. 

V 

Vaughan (poet) , 154. 
Virgil, 163. 



" Virgil's Garden," 14, 46. 

W 

Walpole's Letters, 157. 

Warburton, 154. 

Wesley's Journal, 36, 51, 155. 

Wherstead, 4. 

Wilkinson, Mrs. (FitzGerald's 

sister), 62. 
Wordsworth, 6, 18, 72, 133, 154, 

158-159, 188. 

Christopher, 6. 

Wotton (poet), 14, 154. 

Wright, Mr. Aldis, 3, 8, 44, 53, 

62, 63, 64, 68, 98. 



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